Grotesque and intriguing, this film is about a young man wrought with living a mundane life. he lives in a high-rise apartment, eats out at a local diner, and goes to work every day. (His run-ins with the boss are hilarious, by the way). He claims that it's the repetitive and civil lifestyle that contribute to insomnia. The only thing to calm him are cancer support groups, none of which apply to him, but in them he is able to cry in the arms of a man named Big Tits and finally sleep, that is until Marla, another support group fraud, begins attending the support groups. Soon after, the narrator meets Tyler in an alleyway where the two fight until they're bleeding. They begin Fight Club.
Beyond the blood, the head bashing, or the skin-singing, what disturbed me most was the main character's tone of narration, a flat but mused voice that recounted events leading up to the present, each stated as though it could happen to anyone, that it may have happened already to you.
These events were unusual. The narrator finding an old abandoned house in a desolate district after his apartment blew up, Marla sleeping with Tyler, but the narrator was never in the same room as the two, the compliance from thousands of men who worked and supported families but were also part of Fight Club, the Robin Hood-like nature of Tyler (was he really that evil? Yes.) the moment Big Tits dies and there is a learned reaction from the followers not to show emotion for the loss of human life. Is masculinity in its truest form really so animalistic and brutal? Is Marla's femininity what saved the narrator?
The man was an insomniac. By day he was the narrator; by night he was Tyler Durden. It's quite Freudian. We are not who we are when we are alone. We are someone just a little different with our closest family members and friends, who choose to believe the best in us. We are entirely different in society. True? I believe so.
The narrator was trying to find truth but also be his truest and best form of a human--leave the insignificant things, like working your way up in the American Dream and instead induce fear into people until they discover what it is they need to be that matters. The narrator makes it clear by the end of the film. We need to have a little of both qualities in us. We should fear the system, we should be civilized, but we should not accept it to a fault. Likewise, we should not separate ourselves completely because we need still to identify with humanity and to be able to know what love is. A little of both and you become a smarter person, a critical thinker, and one who is content enough to accept the world around him but always question it.
This film is about compliance and whether we will choose to obey the system or not.
Watch it, but beware, the blood and brutality is unforgettable.
No comments:
Post a Comment