Fight Club Movie Review

Fight Club is a 1999 film based on a 1996 novel wrote by Chuck Palahniuk. It was directed by David Fincher. The movie starred Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. Norton plays the unnamed narrator, who is sick of his job and slightly disconnected with reality. This is because he has narcolepsy. He then forms a ‘fight club’ with a soap salesman named Tyler Durden (Pitt). Tyler is almost like the opposite personality of the main character, he is much more confident, reckless and in your face.

He also then starts a relationship with Marla Singer (Bonham Carter). The movie is based on the novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. Jim Uhls was selected to write the film adaptation. Fincher was selected to be the director because he was very enthusiastic about the story.

Our Narrator finds temporary relief by attending various support groups under false pretenses at the start of the film. Although this stops working thanks to Marla Singer. She is the personification of death with all black clothes and a cigarette in her mouth at all times, even hoping to get cancer. Both characters feel that if they were actually dying, then maybe their lives would mean something more, but the narrator can only get little release out of pretending to be close to death in support groups, especially with Marla now there doing the exact same thing. So flight club was born at first as a way to feel real physical pain with actual risk of death. Marla, the Narrator and Tyler all have a strange kind of relationship throughout the movie. The whole chain of events throughout the movie happens after the meeting of Marla. With this is mind, it could be hypothesized that the Narrator is taking this wicked turn in his life because of not only his major insomnia and sleep-deprived depression, but as a way of coping with his different feelings for this woman.

The purpose of the film could be that sometimes maybe you should live life with a little reckless abandon. Tyler and the Narrator are complete opposites. He is a sort of “ideal man” compared to the narrator and he wants to be more like Tyler. Tyler is unpredictable and is the embodiment of living in the moment. He even proclaims “All the ways you wish you could be, that’s me. Look like you want to look, I fuck like you want to fuck. I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I’m free in all the ways that you were not.” While the narrator is the everyday unfulfilled man, a cog in the corporate machine that wants to break free. His name is not mentioned throughout the entire movie so it is strongly suggested he is meant to represent all of us in society. It seems as though his only joy in life is buying IKEA furniture for his condo. Tyler is a very powerful and interesting character because like the narrator we are socialized and most of the time we don’t let ourselves do what we want most.

This film shows a “screw the system” sort of mentality that could have been brewing in many people’s minds at the time of the release. Fight Club has also been called a sort of “coming of age” movie for the men of generation X. Although Tyler and the Narrator both like fighting at the “fight club”, it isn’t enough. The narrator says this at one point describing the fighting “When the fight was over, nothing was solved. But nothing mattered.” Throughout the film Tyler creates an almost “army” of members of this fight club. He strongly pushes his anarchy and non-conformist ideologies unto them and gets very angry if there is any push back. Tyler ultimately sets out to destroy society and he even believes the cure to capitalist depression is to blow up the credit card companies. He calls this Project Mayhem. By the end of the film the narrator has to decide if he really wants to destroy everything or if there should be a limit to this anarchy. This shows how Tyler Durden is basically the wild side of us, reacting on instincts with desire to destroy and create. To be totally honest and authentic which feels fantastic and is good to remember every once and awhile. Only a bit though of course, not to the extent of Tyler in the movie which could be catastrophic.

The movie also touches on not being materialistic. This is demonstrated well with the narrator and Tyler talking at a bar. “Narrator: I had it all, I had a stereo that was very decent, A wardrobe that was getting very respectable, I was close to being complete. Tyler Durden: Fuck off with your sofa units and green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let’s evolve, let the chips fall where they may”. Tyler also exclaims “’The things you own end up owning you’ which is evident when all his furniture and other things in his home get blown up (by Tyler). When calling about his ruined condo he says “That was not just a bunch of stuff that got destroyed, it was me!” The movie shows that we should not define ourselves by our possessions.

I think this film does a great job at showing its intended purpose. Although it is a very “rough”’ movie and wasn’t necessarily received well when it first come out, I hope people have come to appreciate it a lot more. This movie is full of so many great quotes with feelings of liberation, despair, insight, and more with great scenes as well as big twists.

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