Fight Club [Blu-ray]

UPDATED REVIEW 16/01/2013One of the best movies ever made: An exercise in "visual philosophy", using all technical resources to illustrate and narrate a mental imaginary and machinations based plotline. Fight Club is a fable of the id, ego, and super ego interacting, to revive the main character ("Jack) from his stupor. This lethargy and detachment from his bodily needs and id instincts, prevents him to sleep and mate. His sexual drive and need for love have been channeled into consumerism. He buys things he doesn't need compulsively, to escape his misery without success. The solutions he (or his psyche segments) comes up with are evolutionary, but basically of the same substance he longs and aches for to awaken him from this lethargy. He starts off visiting shockingly bleeding heart -support groups. Used to the corporate politically correct, neutral and aseptic dialogues, this candidness rattles him up towards vitality, recognizing his own humanity, enlightening the steps to come in the path. Nirvana is his desired path, the path at the very core of all human being that looks for religion, drugs or any perception of god or what is beyond words and things, and ultimately that ghost inside us. His Id/super ego is Tyler Durden. He shows him how to escape from fear. That fear that drove him to drown himself into things, in work and vapid banality. Then there comes the Fight Club. "Fight club wasn't about winning or losing. It wasn't about words." Says Jack. It is not about violence in the sense of hurting someone else out of anger, I would add. Jack is detached from the animal we are, that eats, defecates, has sex and breathes. Jack is detached from the caveman we have been for thousands of years, that "evolved" men despise, but is rooted in our DNA. Jack is an extreme case of the dangers of excessive consumerism, individuality and materialism of our culture. Jack fears loosing (a fight, his job, anything that threatens his ego or causes him pain) and longs for human contact and intimacy. Searching for a relationship is a big stretch. Baby steps, the support group first. Then fighting furnishes him with all this.I would like to address the movie's critics like Robert Ebert, who fail to seize the zeitgeist and how fight club relates and how the violence is tangential. The story is about a very particular individual with a very common pathology who seeks a very unorthodox solution in a very dire, desperate situation. This masterpiece exercises and puts forth "visual philosophy", displaying what would be a modern version of Zen enlightenment exercises or Koans. There is no doctor that treats greed and Ikea fetishes. This dude is on his own. He needs to get in touch with his masculinity and loose the fear at the root of all fears, the fear of death, and so do the other attendees of the Fight Club.Fighting is a start; the fear of physical harm is in the same line. Guys don't go to Fight Club to win, everyone is a winner, because the target is to unload the burden of fear. If you desensitize yourself to the fear of punches and blood, abstract fear triggers, as being fired diminish by contrast. Our culture is plagued with fears of the unknown, the what ifs that blocks us from taking risks that could change or enhance our life.Tyler Durden, the superego is boundless and moves forward unfettered to things that are not realistic for the ego, the pranks and crimes against possessions of the project mayhem. But before that he confronts Jack with the fear of death using chemical burn. Crazy, unorthodox yet effective, and more important in a movie: entertaining.Finally, Jack evolves towards love, the main driver from the start. The movie is a love story. His relationship with the woman is abrasive, because his sexuality is twisted, hence is expressed through unexpected outlets at the start. He develops his personality and is able to express caring for a female and start a relationship and integrates his psyche, destroying his overpowering superego. Metaphorically expressed by the dissolution of Tyler.A beautifully aesthetically stunning crafted movie, fluid as our thouth processes are. From the start it displays a voyage through the brain's fear center. As a fable that it is, the use of special effects and creative, aggressive, edgy cinematography suspends your disbelief into a journey in a very human experience, a tale about our war. As Tyler Durden says when he puts the finger on our greed/consumerism epidemic, "our war is a spiritual war". Interwoven masterfully are the elements of a man's struggle with this disease and fighting our war. It never stops being an action film.The rant that Tyler delivers to the fight club, encapsulates some of the concerns the movie wants to bring the audience to brood upon. It is one of the few congruent lines thrown in your lap to understand the movie and the issues brought to light. Issues related to living lives without meaning, in mechanic jobs we hate, to buy stuff conditioned by the media to, but that we really don't truly need. We've become consumer droids. Space monkeys conditioned to press buttons towards oblivion. The media offers its carrot: fame, fortune, and every Ego-booster conceivable. And if the entanglement is rooted on the ego logic, ego perception and egotistic behavior it only messes up the problem further. All reinforces the need to gain awareness of the influence of the ego.The movie doesn't wrap up nicely the answers to these questions, and throws them on your lap.This movie left me with the strong impression of watching one of the most aggressive criticisms towards the dangers of excessive consumerism, of my generation.It is difficult to believe it was made by the director of Seven and two of the most prominent actors of our generation who put their necks on the line to express these concerns.Bravo!!

Not only is this movie a gripping thriller mystery, it's a top-tier action movie with fantastic acting, writing, camerawork, and composition. The narrator is well-rounded, introspective, and likable, while still flawed enough to be relatable for the audience. I'm 26 years old myself, and the movie holds up wonderfully for something that came out the year after I was born. The most adrenaline-pumping scenes in the movie are just far-fetched enough to make you question whether they're real life or not, while still maintaining a groundedness made possible by just how well-written and acted the characters are. This movie strongly reminds me of the book "When Rabbit Howls" in the way that the audience is led through the mystery right with the narrator, keeping you guessing till the very end. Even upon additional watches, the movie is still captivating. There are always more details to pick up on, even if you already know the answer to the main mystery; it just gives you a whole new perspective the next time around. My only critique is how hard it is to watch people getting seriously (pretend) injured on screen without someone actually taking them to the hospital afterwards, but that's just me. And lastly... I couldn't leave this review without giving a mention to how attractive Helena Bonham Carter, Edward Norton, and Brad Pitt are. All in all, masterfully done. Will watch again. And again. And again.

WARNING. THIS REVIEW GIVES END OF FILM AWAY.Critics and viewers who think this is about getting your macho up miss the point. So do those who think this is a "violent" film. Fight Club is really about personal liberation, and genius that osolates into insanity.Ed Norton's no name character is living a banal, materialistic yuppie life. He has no friends, no gal, and his possessions define him. Low and behold, he can't sleep.Our hero first seeks refuge in support groups and new age mush. He goes to meetings for diseases and addicitions he does not have. He is a "tourist," and at first, a very sound sleeping one.Until he meets Marla, fellow tourist. Marla is much better at this game than he is. She is also alot more crazy, or liberated, or both. She walks in traffic, realizing life can end any moment. She outwits her rival tourist, and soon, he is back to sleepless square one.Soon, he meets Tyler. Tyler has no use for material objects, but has as much distain for the touchy feely, microwave sensativity alter-exisistance of our protagonist. Tyler beleives in living in the moment, which requires shedding of all attachments, physical and mental. "It is only when you have lost everything," he says, "that you are free to do anything"How does one get here? The two start an underground, secret fight club, where other young men with similar plights can go and box, with total abandon. Eventually, this grows, to the edge of sanity. Soon, boxing is found to be only a means to an end--stripping ones self down to primal instincts and being truely alive. Between bouts, Tyler starts a fling with Marla.But even fighting and worrier simplicity is not enough; the fight club decides to spread the gospel, and devise a plan to blow up several financial institutions, wiping out credit records and thus the whole base of materialistic capitalism, which, fight club members would say, binds us all into emotional sleep in pursuit of $300 neckties and Dolche Gabana armpit razors.Fair enough, but anarchy was not what our narrator intended--all the guy was really trying to do was get some sleep--and he sets out to stop Tyler from executing his master plan.Only one problem: Tyler does not exist.This raises one of several major points in the film. Our hero did not feel he could make such big changes on his own, and sets up an alter-ego, which is really his ideal self--all the things he aspires to be and can't. This sounds insane, but to a degree, we all have a fantasy about doing what we want when we want, saying what crosses our mind, and being free from the demons-material, social, and psycological- that stop us from being ourselves. Usually, we see our ideal selves as another person, devorced from us.Now, if we believe our heros version of events, he has gone quite mad, but on another level his madness is genius. We all have this internal process. He just externalized it, and probably came closer to getting free form his chains then most of us will. Where does personal liberation end and anarchy begin? Good question, and isn't it the fear of stepping over the line that stop most of us from finding out. Which is scarrier--staying how we are or wading into the forbidden zone? I don't know.Fight Club makes more keen social comments. When our hereo begins to let go of his yuppie lifestyle and begins his 12-step programs, he is only trading one costume for another. The film is as critical of the 'lets cry and find our power animal' psudo-psychology that has infested out culture as it is the crass materialism it replaces. It is like the alcoholic who goes to AA, and this replaces the liqour as the base for his or her identity.The violence in Fight Club is really not violence as we think of it. Everyone fighting wants to be there, and the intent of the fighting is collective liberation, not to do harm to another. It is a means to an end: with other characters, the boxing could have been pottery or fly fishing. So it is difficult to be upset by this "violence" when you consider its unique roll in the story.Two other points about violence stand out: First, the one time he takes a fight to far and disfigures a fellow member, it is at a point in the film where he is about to go over the edge; a turning point.Second, yes, empty skyscrapers are blown up at the end of Fight Club. But remember, this was two years before September 11th. We knew in the back of our minds a large scale terrorist attack was possible, but our biggest focus in 1999 was how much the NASDAQ went up each day; this was a very different time. America was partying. No one knew the unthinkable would happen soon, so you really can't say, retroactively, that the destruction in the film was in bad taste.Regardless, Fight Club is a funny, entertaining, thought provoking film, its points much more nuanced than the title and fight scenes indicate.