Fight Club, a Powerful Satire on America's Unquenchable Desire for Materialism

Rating: 8/10 (6 May 2019)

Is there any extent to which ordinary lives of annoyed individuals could be exciting? Fight Club is one of them. The movie is about Edward Norton, the narrator of the story and an insomniac who encounters a weird soap salesman named Tyler Durden to establish an underground fight club with some unorthodox strict rules. The partnership between the two characters works well unless Marla Singer, the leading female character, intervenes and grasps Tayler's attention.
The critical tone of the movie against America's innate obsession with consumerism is certainly one of the strongest themes as it was the factor that helps audience to understand what the narrator and Tyler were fighting against. The narrator seems to be grasped in the system doing mindless purchasing of pieces of furniture. This is a widespread trap of materialism being promoted through advertisements. Buying useless stuff is the source of pleasure for people. The rich in the movie spend a fortune over trivial items like perfumes while the poor part of the society starved for basic needs. This thirst of consumers is unquenchable unless they control it on their own.
The same theme is mingled up with the notion of perfection and beauty in things. The narrator acknowledges the fact that people like being healthy and are obsessed with things that are "perfect." The contemporary American society defines a perfect man to be the well-dressed one, owns many pieces of furniture and sustains a pleasant attitude all the time. The consumerism and this need of looking well-off are rooting in the same desire of appearing "perfect." The Narrator implicitly states that he was himself a "product" and he struggles to sell himself.
None of the characters in the movie appears to be believing in God or any religion as those concepts are totally fragmented in contemporary American society where consumerism is the new "religion". This provides them a deeper and emotional satisfaction that one may find in prayers or submission of one's will to God.
The theme is spiced up with the jaw-droppingly impressive performance of Edward Norton, the protagonist of the plot. He puts himself in shoes of a traditional common man doing his regular job. His attire and entire mise-en-scene of the movie speaks volumes for the distinction of Fight Club doing a great justification with the central theme. David Fincher used his camera and lighting for the character development of Tyler who is often shown in dark and stronger points of the frame. This makes him a strong character like lucifer stimulating Edward's ego. He is imaginary but his impact makes created through cinematography makes him more real than the Narrator himself. Fight Club stands out of the crowd among all the movies criticizing consumerism like American Psycho and The Wolf of Wall Street. This fact makes Fight Club a cult classic and one of the best movies ever made on the planet against the greedy nature of man.