Relevant upon release, relevant today

Rating: 10/10 (18 March 2018)

When a depressed, restless man (Edward Norton) looking for a solution to his problems meets a soap salesman named Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), the two join up to form an underground Fight Club. Along the way, they meet and recruit other men in the same boat, all looking for an escape from their mundane lives. Together, they set out to accomplish much more than just your "ordinary" underground fighting ring.
We initially meet the narrator as he describes his life with a less than enthusiastic attitude. He monotonously describes his apartment and contents as the things he was taught by society to want. With every purchase, he is seemingly filling a void that continues to grow with each purchase and is never able to be satisfied. After meeting Tyler Durden, the narrator begins to question whether or not he has to accept what he has been taught as fact, or whether he is willing and able make a change. After a significant event forces the narrator to vacate his IKEA catalog-filled apartment, the narrator decides to take Durden up on his offer as a way out of his excruciatingly boring life. As we follow the narrator and Durden through uninviting environments beginning with his apartment and transitioning to dilapidated houses and after-hours bar basement brawls, we see a reflection of the narrator's internal mood in each place. All of the men the narrator and Durden recruit along the way have fallen victim to becoming worker drones and feel as though their lives have no purpose, just like the main character. They are living as they have been told to live, buying what they've been told to buy, and unconsciously adapting to ideals in which they themselves do not believe. Eventually, the fight club develops its own set of laws and ideals far from those of modern society. The men feel they have purpose and as such, come up with a plan to change the world and their own lives forever.
Fight Club emphasizes the modern American consumeristic culture and the feeling of feminism it forces on men. As a result, men like the narrator are forced to suppress their natural masculine tendencies in lieu of adapting to the mainstream way of living. When these feelings are repressed for a length of time, males become depressed and search for the remedy. The fighting, although a turn-off for some viewers, is a necessary component of the film as the men in the club attempt to regain some semblance of the manhood run off by our culture.
The cinematic elements of this film are top-notch in creating an environment that is as grim and depressing as the thoughts inside the narrator's mind. The production staff make excellent use of lighting and camera lenses to create dimly lit rooms, camera angles that make the audience feel though they are part of the club, and sound that transfers the pain of the fight right to the viewer. In fact, in a particular scene which utilizes some forbidden materials to create bars of soap, we can almost smell the horrific aroma created in the room through the extensive audio and visual elements used.
While mainstream culture dictates much of our lives even today, 20 years after production, the narrator and his club allow the viewer to decide whether the consequences are worse to follow the herd of consumerism or to make our own statement of masculinity and create a little mayhem.