Fight Club

Rating: 10/10 (21 June 2016)

"Fight Club" is a film that went from unknown to a cult film realized for its smart satire to a film with a large following, but loved by many of the people that it satirizes. In a way, this progression reflects the progression of the fight club in the film itself.
The film begins as seemingly a satire of consumer culture and our mundane lives. The main character has insomnia and is a slave to consumer culture and his boring 9 to 5 job where he hates his boss. The one frame inserts of Tyler Durden into the narrators boring life show his desperation to escape his routine. He is so desperate in fact that he starts going to support groups after his doctor recommends going to one to understand "true pain". He realizes that when people are dying they are so raw and truthful and just don't care about the trivial things that he does, and it makes him feel better. He begins to start sleeping well but a woman that does the same thing as him shows up, except she does it simply because it costs less than a movie and has free coffee, but she reminds him of his own lie. The narrator explains that she knows that she could die at any moment, therefore she does what she wants. His insomnia starts up again. He confronts her and they exchange numbers. From here, it starts to show the narrator wake up on planes in places that he doesn't recognize and he doesn't remember how he got there. He meets various normal people on planes that he calls "single serving friends". The most interesting one, however is Tyler Durden. He is cool, different, anti- establishment, and completely aware of all of the trivial things in our daily lives. He points out that there are many safety devices on planes that only exist to make us feel safer. When all of the narrators belongings go up in flames in an apartment fire, he calls Tyler. He doesn't know why, but we know it's because Tyler is subconsciously what the narrator wants to be. While the narrator is sulking about his lost belongings, Tyler shows his distaste for consumer culture. He knows "what we own can end up owning us". When they walk outside, Tyler tells the narrator to hit him. Tylers logic is that if he's never gotten in a fight before then how would he know if it was a good thing or not. They fight, and the narrator begins to feel liberated from his boring routine. He moves into a broken down home, and begins to fight more with Tyler. More people see them fighting one night and join. Eventually there is a whole club. Tyler establishes rules (rule number one, you do not talk about fight club), and so far, all this seems logical enough. For one I've never been in a fight, so I wouldn't know how it could feel, and two, I'm sure all of us have thought of breaking from the usual routine. Also, most importantly, Tyler seems cool and smart. But one night when Tyler holds a gun to a man's head, but spares him, and tells him to become a veterinarian (what he is currently in school for) in the next six weeks or he will be dead. We are shocked at first, but Tyler not only gave this man motivation to do what he wants to do with his life, and as he explains "that mans breakfast will taste better than any other meal we have ever had". It sounds logical, he made that man appreciate life, but as the next scene shows, he is manipulating us as well as the people in the film. He looks directly into the camera and tells us what he later tells his army as we see the edges of the film roll. We then realize how hypocritical and insane this all is. It is an anarchist and anti- establishment group whose followers are even more brainwashed than the consumers that they were originally mocking. They have a large list of rules and do mindless work and terrorist attacks for a leader that controls them completely. It is both a satire of consumerism and daily life as we're told to live it and the anarchists that it inspires. What it suggests is a balance in which you are not made numb by the mundanes of everyday life, and you don't buy brand name furniture and appliances to make you feel like you have meaning, but you also shouldn't become anarchistic to escape your lifestyle to the point of inciting meaningless violence and having cult like activities. This balance is suggested by the narrator and Marla holding hands at the end.
What elevates the film to a 10/10 however, is the commentary on the emasculation of men (specifically through testicular cancer), and what that does to them, and how they come to grips with that. I won't go in depth, as this is already going long, but the very end is great, where the narrator holds Marla's hand as the buildings in front of them collapse, while their pose and clothes mirror each other, with narrator seemingly wearing a dress, showing that he has accepted his feminine side. But, back with the other satire of the film, Tyler seems to have the last word as he corrupts the film, which is ultimately a commercial product (there is even a Pepsi ad in the film as well as noticeable product placement), by inserting a few frames of a penis.