So here’s the deal, I’m not sure I’ve ever watched this film before tonight, but I think I have. The fact is I didn’t remember it at all, so when I watched it today, I was just amazed. Great cast, great plot – makes me want to read the book – and one of the best movies I have ever watched. If you haven’t watched the movie take it from me and watch it, I’ll be revealing plot points and endings.
It’s strange that I’ve seen this movie and American Psycho so close to each other, both of them dealing with split personalities and people doing – or in the latter case not doing – something of tremendous importance. Imagine working at a mundane desk job, living in insomnia and half your life being a living dream. That is the life this unnamed narrator had, except that in this life of his he was doing this controlled by a different personality in his mind. Those times where he lays awake, yet where he wishes to have been asleep, he turns into Tyler Durden. As he describes it in the film “Tyler wakes when all the rest of us go to bed”, he works night jobs, taking risks, slipping subliminal porn into films at one of his jobs, pissing into soup at another. Unlike the unnamed narrator he is a man who doesn’t care for what could be he just does it submerging himself into a world where chaos is wanted.
Imagine now meeting yourself in a plane, asking what you do and taking an interest in yourself for this single-service friend. It sounds weird, but when it’s another half of you that you’re meeting, one that you can physically see, the idea takes some substance. The director portrayed all the situations between these two characters brilliantly, hinting all the time at the fact they are the same person. When they start living together, they create Fight Club, Tyler basically being the narrators subconscious manifestation of all he’d love to do, but doesn’t have the life or guts to do. The creating of this club, the wild sex with Marla, the fighting itself, the expansion of the fight club, the leadership. There are two occasions where one sees Tyler’s face behind the narrators eyes, the first being when he stands up to his boss, getting the fight club all sorts of benefits, and the second when he beats up “Angel Face” claiming he wanted to destroy something beautiful. But other than that one can recognize that, for the time being, the narrator has found in himself his own master and even says in his own words that “eventually we all turned into what Tyler wanted us to”. He takes control of his life and that of others in his unconscious, and creates an army. In major cities separate charters are created all mimicking the original Fight Club and all carrying beliefs of anarchism. Soon these bodies learn how to govern themselves without needing Tyler’s intervention, and suddenly everything falls out of the narrators hands. It’s about then that he figures out and realizes that he is Tyler Durden, and tries to destroy all he himself has created. It finally ends with him taking over his life again, killing Durden, by shooting himself, yet he survives, and watches major buildings in the city explode being razed to dust.
All I can say about it is that it’s a deeply involving movie, which excites you to think and act, it presents anti-materialistic ideas, as well as concentrating on self control. It shows that you hold the power to your life, all you have to do is take it. Not only is this film completely worth watching, it is one movie I can call a must-watch, the acting, and filmography are at its best and the plot is one that makes you think for hours after you’ve put the DVD back in its cover.
