Fight Club - Everybody a Tyler Durden

Rating: 9/10 (3 July 2000)

"Any art that doesn't reflect the dysfunctional side of the society is an art in denial." Edward Norton said something to that effect about Fight Club (you can read the transcript in the DVD version). I think it sums up the essence of Flight Club pretty well. Confucius said that man is born virtuous and another great Chinese teacher said the opposite, man is born devilish. It has been under great debate for hundreds of year which one is right. And I said they are both right and Fight Club illustrated both doctrine, more about the devilish one though, in style.
This film is about what people do to survive in today's world. We have to be pretentious, dishonest, deceitful, fake etc and all such to get through our day to day life. And what do we get in return, as Tyler said, "to buy things we don't need." So we put on make-ups, perfume, designer dress, IKEA furniture to define ourselves and to portrait an image of ourselves that we want other people to see. Ironically, our society cannot function without all these phony smiles and bogus outlooks.
When asked what we want to become in grade school, we all said we want to be professors, doctors, dentists, accountants, and lawyers. But the reality is our society doesn't need 50,000 professors, doctors, lawyers and such. Someone has to clean the street, handle the garbage, wait the table. We are brought up thinking we will all be rich and famous and not the inevitable that some of us, a good portion of us to be exact, will fail to be anything of any significant purpose.
Some people might envy the condo life (I do) Norton has in the movie but Fight Club told us that Norton is actually a member of the bottom pillar of the society (all condiments and not food). These are only few of the main points Fight Club wants to get across to the audience. It recited the other side, the dysfunctional side of our society that we live in everyday but fail to see. We fail to see it because we don't think about it. "We accepted the world of which we are presented." Said Christof from the Truman Show.
I could image people not liking Fight Club, the old people who grew up watching Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant will probably not liking it. But for young people not liking it, they probably just don't understand it. They don't understand it because they don't think other then the obvious. Buying a pair of Nike won't make you jump higher, drinking Gatorade won't make you Mike and getting one of those platinum credit card doesn't make you a millionaire but only knee debt in credit card debt.
If the movie has a flaw, it is the disappearance of Tyler at the end. The writers use it to explain the main plot but I think it could be done in a better way. And I really like the apocalyptic ending. Not every detail of the movie makes sense and audience probably shouldn't expect everything make sense anyway.
It's really hard to review a movie like Fight Club, Roger Ebert gave it only two stars out of four which I think is way too low. Personally, I will rate it as high as Pulp Fiction which is 3.5 out of 4 stars. I would recommend young people go see Fight Club, you will discover more about yourself and the society after watching it.
*Edward Norton, whom I believe has been involvement in the script is becoming a gem of the American movie. He might turn out to be another Woody Allen somewhere down the line.