UPDATED REVIEW 16/01/2013
One 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!!
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