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Dusty: The things you review end up reviewing you.
Rating: R
Director: David Fincher
Writers: Chuck Palahniuk, Jim Uhls
Stars: Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Meat Loaf, Helena Bonham Carter
Release Date: October 15, 1999 (United States)
Run time: 2 hours, 19 minutes
THE PLOT:
via wiki
The unnamed Narrator, who struggles with insomnia and dissatisfaction with his job and lifestyle, finds temporary solace in support groups. As his insomnia worsens, he discovers that expressions of emotional vulnerability help him sleep, leading him to join multiple groups for people facing emotionally distressing problems, despite his expressions being fraudulent. His efforts are thwarted when Marla Singer, another impostor, joins the same groups. The Narrator cannot present his fabricated struggles as genuine, or divert his attention from her presence as an impostor, causing his sleeplessness to return. He arranges for them to attend different sessions to regain his ability to sleep and, under certain circumstances, to exchange contact information, to which she reluctantly agrees.
On a return flight from work, the Narrator meets a soap salesman, Tyler Durden. After an explosion destroys the Narrator’s apartment, he moves into Tyler’s decrepit house. They become friends and start an underground fight club in a bar basement. Tyler also saves Marla from an overdose, initiating a sexual relationship between them, while the Narrator remains cold to her.
The Narrator quits his job, blackmails his boss for funds and grows the fight club, attracting new members, including his cancer support group friend, Bob. Tyler morphs the club into Project Mayhem, committing vandalism to disrupt the social order. Feeling sidelined, the Narrator confronts Tyler, who admits to orchestrating the explosion in the Narrator’s apartment and then goes missing. Bob is killed by the police during a mission, prompting the Narrator to attempt to stop the project and look for Tyler. Discovering the project’s nationwide reach and being called Tyler Durden by Marla and other people, he realizes he and Tyler are split personalities.
Learning that Project Mayhem plans to erase debt records by blowing up the headquarters of credit-card companies, the Narrator unsuccessfully warns Marla and goes to the police, some of whom are also Project Mayhem members. He attempts to disarm the explosives, but Tyler attacks him. The Narrator shoots himself in the mouth, killing Tyler. Marla arrives then she and the Narrator hold hands as they watch the targeted buildings collapse.
REACTION:
Fight Club was a movie uncomfortably ahead of its time and it’s the kind of layered philosophical storytelling, critiquing both politics and society, that causes vehement disagreement. It’s the sort of story that leads a reviewer to give explanations about what he thinks it’s about. In addition to being a tightly paced and never dull screenplay adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s book of the same name, it’s also incredibly well-acted and well-directed. I don’t think this movie works without Pitt and Norton both giving absolutely masterful performances. Fincher’s filming style – born from work in music videos – really works here to give this edgy source material a new (for its time) and confident visual nature, too. The film is extremely violent, so I would not recommend it to everyone, but it is, in my opinion, a masterpiece.
The most obvious example of the story being ahead of its time is the collapsing towers to end the film. For anyone who lived through September 11, 2001, two years after this was released, this scene causes a visceral reaction that is at the same time both eerie and prophetic-seeming. But that’s only the culmination. The events from Fight Club that led to that moment are also unsettlingly familiar. A charismatic leader gathers together a group of men from the fringes of society, organizes them into fighters under the nose of the society that pushed them into the fringes, and then uses their anonymity as a weapon. If you were born in the 21st century, you grew up with the threat of terrorism sleeper cells. In the 1990s, though, this concept – presented effectively in the film – was a novel idea. Below even that layer though, and serving as the film’s driving motivation, the movie points to a significant male complaint that might feel extremely relevant today as we live in the time just after the rise of the “manosphere” – namely that society has become overly feminized and too comfortable ignoring men on the fringes. The movie starts with Edward Norton’s character – an insomniac who hates his monotonous life – visiting a male group therapy session for men who have lost their testicles due to cancer. He visits in an effort to feel something. The emasculating public confessions, hugging, crying, and verbiage of the setting is presented as a dark humor critique of the rise of a female-driven talk therapy culture that comes across as broadly (mis)applied to men.
The intangible enemy of men, as presented within the film, is fear. The fear of social consequences, physical pain, and privation – according to the protagonist – function as prisons. Fear is presented as the barrier between men and personal dignity. In one instance, we see a crying male cashier being held at gunpoint by Tyler Durden until the cashier agrees to go pursue his life’s ambition to become a veterinarian. Tyler explains to, well, himself, after the incident that he set that man free.
Tyler Durden: It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.
Most of this alleged self-actualization presented in the film is done voluntarily and as part of a club. The shared experience generates a sense of mutual respect and belonging that are absent from the group therapy sessions at the start of the film. The talk about feelings comes across as fake and performative, whereas Fight Club is presented as an authentic alternative. The alarming part of this movie, as a viewer, is that this feels logical, albeit in a twisted way.
If the whole thing had stopped there, the movie might be something other than a warning. I can imagine it as an Adam Sandler comedy. It doesn’t stop there, though. The problem is that it’s hard to decide when someone has recovered *enough* dignity. Individual dignity is one thing. What does collective dignity look like? If the assumption is that society is designed in such a way that it takes dignity away, doesn’t that problem require a dramatic solution? So Durden builds an army and it grows powerful. The plan – which works as the film ends – is to destroy the buildings that house the world’s debt records. In the 1990s, you see, records were on paper. If you destroyed them, you couldn’t later prove that something had happened (or that it didn’t happen.) There’d be no way to prove someone owed money if the paper trail vanished. You’d collapse the world financial system and simultaneously set people free from their own debt.
(Would this probably cause a lot more problems than it solved? Of course. But it would reset society back to a survival of the most competent status as opposed to one where the wealthy and those in leadership inherited their position. Durden at least would view this as being a restoration of fairness and dignity.)
Ultimately, the film is a warning to everyone to give attention and respect to those who exist on the fringes. You might also view Fight Club as a film presenting solutions to men on those fringes. “Get off the grid. Become self-sufficient. Learn to fight.” That’s not a comfortable message, but the logic of it is what makes the story interesting and why it continues to resonate.
There’s another layer to this story, too, namely the plot twist that Tyler Durden and the Narrator are one and the same person. A smart viewer in 1999 might have realized this twist on his first watch, before the big reveal, but even if he did, it’s really fun to rewatch this and spot the clues. Fincher and the screenplay do a really clever job of hiding the truth in plain sight throughout the film, both within the screenplay and also with the filming technique of (for example) occasionally making it look as though Pitt’s Durden glitches.
Through the lens of psychoanalysis, Pitt’s Durden is the Id/Superego of the character, in conflict with the Norton’s Narrator as his Ego. At some point, either early in the film or shortly before it started, the two split with Durden acting independently of the Narrator. Durden is able to do what the Narrator cannot – which is to act without fear. As the movie progresses, the Narrator subtly starts taking on Durden’s characteristics – including his dress and how he talks to people. In one memorable scene, he smokes in his office – to the horror of his boss – and beats himself up in front of this same boss (to frame his boss and get company compensation.) Eventually the Narrator becomes aware of the personality split and tries to stop his other self. He eventually tries to commit suicide – or so it seems – but after he survives it is unclear as to whether the two re-merged back into one person, or whether one of them eliminated the other entirely. If you’re really into psychological thrillers, there’s a lot here to enjoy, wholly apart from the social and political commentary baked into the narrative.
Overall, I really enjoyed Fight Club. The story is deep and continues to feel extremely relevant. The movie also still looks good, and it’s always a pleasure to watch a couple of great actors give masterful performances – as both Norton and Pitt do here. This is an incredibly violent film, so I do not give a universal recommendation to everyone, but if you’re not put off by violence, and something that makes you think, I highly recommend it.
Have you seen Fight Club? If so, what did you think?
