Insert clichÃ©d and ultimately unworthy way of saying "this film is the balls" here

Rating: 10/10 (24 June 2008)

I am Joe's newly enlightened perspective.
One thing that can be said about Fight Club is that it exhibits a certain mastery of technique, a certain stranglehold of different conventions...this is evident in the way the film toys with these conventions, often with meticulous precision. Here is a film whose every design seems to point to the optimisation of narrative influence on the audience, through the unreliable narrator, the main character Jack. In Jack, unlike the main character in almost every other film before and after it, we get a character through whom we can see this world. Thus we are presented with an endlessly dark picture; Jack doesn't have the hopes of greatness that we can all identify in the heroes of old; the sanctimonious sense of self importance is done away with, as that would fly right over our heads. Instead our character lives in mundane, dull darkness, with eyes that filter it's sights with relentless pity and exhausted, often darkly humorous sardonism; a filter which, although not pleasant, fits like a glove into the psyche in it's vivid darkness and how we deal with the events to come.
This is where the film comes in; I dealt with the main character first because his viewpoint, the narrator's insomniac, twisted view on the world is the spin on the narrative. His alter-ego, Tyler Durden provides the friction and uncertainty that breaks the darkness and introduces the pacey, sweaty, claustrophobic tension. The subliminal flashes of Durden in Jack's consciousness in the first leg of the film let the audience know that this film is out to break the comfort zone and to shock and surprise. The character in itself is the yang to Jack's yin and the pacemaker of the film: the clothes, the body language and the twisted philosophies. As we leave our comfortable insomniac viewpoint we enter these twisted philosophies along with the narrator, thanks largely to the fantasy scenes, the subliminal flashes the self referencing humour (the film reel gag referencing the earlier ways of the film), all made possible by the seamless, exciting method of direction and pacing. It takes enormous talent to produce such a twisted state of mind so vividly and so involvingly.
It also takes one such talent to produce such a twist near the end in a way that pays off the attention and intense psychological involvement that the audience contributes. Up until the plot twist the plot becomes more and more dark and alienating; slowly the world Jack creates gets away from him and he drifts apart from his alter ego, and thus we feel increasingly more tense for the end. And the end pays off. The insomnia, the sanity, all of the abnormal traits vanish and for the first time we see a normal, clear headed human. Possibly the biggest pay off in any film I have ever seen; we see a character lose morals and gain new ones, we see a character heal without ever knowing it because the modern, revolutionary, self mocking storytelling doesn't let us come outside the dried-blood stained box and view him under the microscope, despite the fact that not all of us could normally relate to an chronic insomniac with an alter ego; at least, not with storytelling this tight.
I am Joe's newly changed life. If you have yet to see this film, you have not yet seen how narrative perspective and fictional events can complement each other to perfection. This film is claustrophobic, mercilessly dark, endlessly brilliant. A credit to film and the boundlessness of the human imagination.