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This is an over-theoretical, insufficiently dramatized meditation/essay on the great issues of our time -- fatherlessness,
the collapse of manhood, the pathology of corporate culture. David Fincher is an interesting director because he has a knack
for teasing the raw nerves of our age, but art requires more than diagnosis -- it requires a therapeutic element as well,
even if the course of treatment indicated is only "keep the dying patient comfortable". Fincher doesn't seem to
be aware, for example, that Marla Singer (as a friend of mine pointed out) is the central figure of this tale, the central
dilemma -- an emblem of the question "if manhood collapses, how do men deal with the power of the feminine?" The
question is deferred in this narrative, and to a degree displaced by a homoerotic dynamic that does little but beg the question.
Fincher's philosophical and spiritual bewilderment is reflected in the film's uneven tone, never finding a balance between
the hilarious and the shocking. "Fight Club" is an important film but not a great or terribly satisfying one.
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