transformation

Rating: Null/10 (16 July 2000)

Anyone who ever had to transform himself into someone different just to bear living his life could relate to this film. We first do it the way we have been told to ie, transforming our savage little selves by enduring extra years of school, working hard, being polite and impressing the boss. We figure out the right clothes, car, furniture, physique and get the haircut. We pick up the friends and lovers we need to combat loneliness. The Edward Norton narrator does all this, surpassing the standards set by his absentee father, but it turns him into a good-boy insomniac begging his Doctor for sleep pills, so what's the next step? He stumbles onto ten step meetings thereby, under a number of false names and identities, encountering his cute penguin power(less) animal, a freaky but devastated, real and interesting group of people and he meets a woman who models self-destruction, Helena Bonham Carter Extraordinaire. In his search for a fulfilling self, the destruction of the old self is imperative. Letting go is imperative. He meets someone he'd rather be, a bad boy, Brad Pitt. They break rules, they fight, they seek clarity, they shun comfort, not so much to serve themselves, although they are served in the process, but to see what will make anyone feel alive. Through trial and error they destroy and they create. Pushing themselves past the edge of sanity, do they make it back or don't they, and what is it exactly, that sanity is? For anyone who wants more this is the movie to see.