...and you bleed just to know you're alive....

Rating: 9/10 (1 November 1999)

I'm no real movie critic, but I enjoyed this movie and found some powerful truth in it. Look at the scene where Tyler lets himself be beaten by the bar owner. He's clearly enjoying it. With the consumerist/materialist focus on the self, this is the way in which the self can be denied. There might be the work of id, ego, and super ego going on here (which would necessitate Marla), but I'm not quite sure. Anyway, this is probably the scene that helped me understand the ending, how the two came one by means of such violence. Rather Zen in a way. Amazing how two such philosophical movies (as far as I've seen) that have a great share of violence are made in the same year (this and The Matrix). Perhaps this is saying something about society in this time.