Dick Flick with a Twist

Rating: 8/10 (16 December 2019)

The first hour of Fight Club is really a treat to behold. Very intelligent, funny and timely. Despite being twenty years old, it captures the post-modern moment very well and was perhaps one of the first films of this kind. Now they are all over the place (see Black Mirror, et al.).
After the first hour, the film gets mired in this weird Dick Flick celebration of violence for the sake of violence--or, rather, for masculinity´s sake? Nonetheless, the film as a whole ends up working because of the surprise ending, which leaves viewers pondering until the end of time what actually transpired within the story world.
My best guess (= most plausible interpretation) is that the Edward Norton character has slipped into a full-on psychotic state, whether as a result of sleep deprivation or drugs (such as LSD), or a combination of the two. One way to understand the film is as the extended hallucination of a madman attempting to make sense of his life and creating a fantasy to fulfill his frustrated desires.
Very creative effort, despite my personal dislike of the overuse of violence.