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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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Dark social commentary
What is the role of a man in modern society? What happens when a man searching for some relevance loses his way and goes down the wrong path, and I mean the really wrong path? What emotions will society allow a man to express and under what conditions? If man can't show external signs of emotional pain, what leads him to crave physical pain? Where are the valid models of masculinity and manhood in our stereotypical consumerism society? Why do men struggle for independence while simultaneously longing to join the pack? How do men redirect or repress anger so they can function in society? How does modern man cope with the loss of the aggressive, primitive, warrior masculine archetype that haunts our genes? All of these issues are explored in Fight Club. Despite the violence, this satire and social commentary is highly entertaining.
Ed Norton is superb as a young man trying to make sense of his world by maintaining a 9 to 5 job, traveling for work to non-descript towns, restaurants, and hotels, buying a condo and furnishing the condo in a manner that shows he knows what is hip. He grows increasingly hostile to his supervisor and his job. Numb to this world and finding that he has no real meaning in life or outlet for his emotions or feelings of connection, he begins joining 12 step programs and disease/survivor support groups.
He joins the testicular cancer support group where men mourn the loss of their testicles and cry in each other's arms. Thus, in a prescribed time and place and condition, men may cry. They can cry over the loss of their manhood, their virility, and their fertility. But these men are mocked in the film for they choose to cry instead of howling. They show emotional pain rather than crave physical pain as the release of their internal pain.
Our narrator meets a young odd woman who craves human connection by attending endless 12 step and support group meetings, just like the narrator. Helen Bonham-Carter plays this role extremely well. So well does she take on this character that this may be one of her strongest performances on film. Wouldn't you think that two young people who crave human contact and genuine emotion so much that they attend endless meetings would find each other? Of course they can't for they don't even know what ails them. They even arrange to attend alternating meetings so that they don't run into each other. Why? Because they may experience genuine emotion should they open themselves to each other.
Then Tyler Durden comes into the scene. He is the narrator's image of masculinity; roughly handsome, arrogant, brash, sarcastic quick wit, fights, doesn't really work because he thinks he can outwit the system, can take a beating, has wild sex, and is firmly grounded in an atheistic bleak existential personal philosophy drenched with nihilism. We have seen this character before in the novels of Paul Bowles and Cormack McCarthy. This archetype never ceases to amuse.
So many themes emerge in this fast paced film. Tyler begins to introduce our narrator to the fight club, an outlet for their aggression and inner pain. For in beating the hell out of each other men release their aggressive impulses and the genuine physical pain is far more real and preferable than any inner existential pain. The fight club is a gift for these men.
How does a healthy society deal with these impulses? Organized sports and game hunting come to mind. These young men also provide the raw materials for military war machines. But for those men that don't fit into the role of hunter, soldier, or jock; the draw to the fight club is understandable. But once in the fight club, how does this process morph into anarchy and terrorism? Why do rebellious young men need to be beat and mastered by a leader? How do they come to believe that submission to the power of a hierarchy is a sign of manhood and allow their aggressive urges to be maintained and directed?
In the scene where the narrator's hand is burned by lye, we hear Freud's theory of God as a father projection. In casual conversation the narrator and Tyler discuss wishing they could fist fight Hemmingway, Gandhi, and Lincoln. After a car wreck, Tyler says they had a 'near life experience'. Such odds and ends are woven throughout the film.
In the end, this is sometimes a hard film to watch, but underneath the satire and violence is nested essential existential questions. We may have answered many of the questions for ourselves and can sleep at night, but as a society we certainly have not answered the questions.
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The 1st Rule of Fight Club. . . .
Great movie. I like the packaging for this DVD. The extras are good and gives the viewer a little more knowledge of behind the scenes filming and special effects production. Great acting by Pitt, Norton, and Carter. I have seen this movie over and over again. If you like stories with a biting sense of humor with a pinch of violence, this is the movie for you.
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Norton and Pitt, hit Gold!
When this movie first hit the world, i didn't understand the hype; I didn't understand the fascination, and quite frankly I avoided seeing it because of the hype surrounding it. in a way, i regret not seeing it sooner.
Now however, I own it! After watching this film many times over since my purchase, I can see why it caught on like it did. For me, the combination of Edward Norton and Brad Pitt together in a film is amazing. Both very solid actors that have proven they can hold their own, and carry others if needed. Both played their own strong characters in this movie, as well as playing off one another with great timing and poise.
The movie itself, is also amazing. The "Fight Club" itself, is not what it seems, and at times you may realize this, but you'll never truly know until the end! The directing is also as good as it gets. One can tell a lot of caution was placed in constructing the story and how to go about telling it.
I like this movie a lot, and as I mentioned, I do regret not seeing it sooner. I also take back everything I said about the hype surrounding it, because it really is one of the best movies of the time!
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This is The Best Soap
This movie has a lot of different themes in one. From what society is told to value, and in a lot of cases pointing out the obsurdity of many things; even things like good soap. Edward Norton who's the narrator talks a lot at the beginning about what he does for a job, checking his companies accidents incase they need a recall. Whether he really dislikes this or not is left to the viewer. Insomnia plays a really big part of his life, and lot's of air travel for his job. He explains how he likes arranging and buying furniture to match a catalog, it makes him feel better.
One day the narrator decides to go to a help group, where his first time he meets Bob played by Meat Loaf. A somewhat strange character Meat Loaf plays. The narrator finds that he sleeps easier that night, so he goes to many different help groups contuing to sleep everynight.
One day when he is flying on a plane for his job, he meets Tyler Durden played by Brad Pitt. This is where the story takes a dramatic turn for the narrator's life. Tyler is not a polite guy, and seems to disapprove of Ed's character. They have an interesting conversation though, one of the many flaws with that he sees with socities ways. The oxygen masks aboard airplanes he says are uses to calm people, getting a high; though not really protecting you at all.
After the plane trip and the meeting with Tyler, he finds his condo room burned from an explosion. So he uses a card with Tyler's number, a soap company business card. They talk in at a bar for awhile, and Tyler says just ask me already if you need a place to stay. From out of nowhere Tyler gets the narrator to hit him. Then they fight out in a parking lot.
The narrator seems almost relaxed more after the fight, his attitude already is changing from the time he first meet on Tyler on the plane.
It's interesting to see Norton's character change, his condo room burning the only place he found an outlet from his job has him needing something else. Tyler introduces him to what he finds is really important, and it's not the way the narrator's life is. The both of them make an underground fight club, which Tyler tells all members to not tell anyone as a strict rule of joining. A lot of people from different classes of living join, you get the feeling they were seeking something different, their lives somehow not forfilled. Not unlike our narrator. The fight club forms groups of a different sort later on in the movie.
I like all of issues brought up in the movie, of valuing material possessions that can get the point of the only thing in some people's lives, feminising men to the point of no dignity, raised by single mothers being normal, not going for your real goals if they take along time to get there. These issues usually aren't popular to bring up in any movie, quite the opposite. The humor is also great at some points. The story is ever changing, not knowing where they're going next. Definetly a rare type of movie.
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One of 1999's best movies
Fight Club is clearly one of the best movies that came out in 99. Brad Pitt and David Fincher team up again succesfully for a very pop cultured film with plenty of action and fight sequences. Edward Norton contuines to show his acting ablity as The Narrartor.
Santa Cruz opts for micro-Fi: the City had hoped to get a full deployment, but has decided to start with a hotzone in their tourist areas, which is far easier to build and quantify the success of.
