Condensed Fight Club in 2 min. 25 seconds

Jim, it seems that lately, you've been in the habbit of breaking the first and second rules of Fight Club.

Raymond. Good god, you're right. Oh well, rules are made to be broken, aren't they? Sayeth Pee-wee: "There's a lotta things about me you don't know anything about, Dottie. Things you wouldn't understand. Things you couldn't understand. Things you shouldn't understand....
You don't wanna get mixed up with a guy like me. I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel."

Jim, I'm going to side with Roger on this one and say Fight Club is overhyped porn for people who want to feel macho but never will be.

ih wached thes philm yes-torday an Ih reeli liek'd it' .

Rodrigo: A lot of people read the movie that way, including Roger. I see it as the complete opposite, a satire of the macho posturing of sophomoric men who feel impotent and emasculated near the end of the 20th century. As for the "porn" -- one of my favorite images is Edward Norton sitting on the toilet and turning a magazine sideways to look at the centerfold. It's an Ikea catalog, of course. As for "overhyped" -- maybe that's somewhat true now, but remember it was a huge box-office flop when originally released. I don't know what I would have made of it if I'd seen it in my teens or twenties. It seems to me that you have to have outgrown the adolescent American male fantasies (including those in Abercrombie & Fitch ads) to see what the movie's up to. (That's not intended as any slur against you -- obviously, I don't know anything about your age or experience!) I'm just saying I think there may be a lot of "people who want to feel macho but never will be" who are attracted to "Fight Club," but they don't really see what it's doing.

I'm with you, Jim - I saw "Fight Club" 4 times in the theater, and it was an integral part of a personal re-evaluation that caused me to take some big chances. Three months after seeing it, I moved across the country into a complete unknown, and now find myself feeling a lot happier about where I am, and who I've become. I can't say Fight Club caused that dramatic change, but as you say, it certainly mirrored the process I went through, and that was a profound support.

I feel irked that so many critics of this film miss the central fact about it - "Fight Club" is about a journey. When Jack morbidly relies on the unquestioning support of his groups, he's in a state of psychological infancy ("Babies don't sleep this good," he says). He moves from that to an adolescent rebellion, rejecting his absentee father and surrogate mother, and identifying with other men. And on toward the blistering climax, in which he breaks free of that, and becomes an adult, capable for the first time of actually connecting with the woman he loves. In those final frames, the towers of authority come tumbling down, and Jack is finally a free person.

I'm completely baffled by how badly this movie is misread, by so many. Most of its critics believe that the second act, the adolescent phase, represents the moral position that is endorsed by the film. Anyone who believes that simply hasn't payed attention.

By the end, Jack has rejected the so-called macho posturing that this film supposedly glorifies. He moves through it. It's a necessary step in his move toward integration and wholeness.

For me, "Fight Club" is a very special film, uniquely entertaining and deeply moving.

Without a single shred of doubt, Fight Club is among the best movies ever made in the history of cinema. It is a work of art, a masterpiece, and incredibly entertaining. It is an emotional and intellectual symphony, completely void of pretense. It is thought of as a cult classic, and maybe it is, but I think it is just pure and simply a classic. How can it be possible that a movie of such depth and originality was received so negatively by the public? I have read many of the comments by critics who hated it (not disliked.. hated), and the funny thing is that their arguments against it are more emotional than logical. Which means that the movie, regardless of how it was received, struck an emotional chord in its audience, and not in a cheap thrill kind of way. It was disturbing. It has been criticised most for its violence, and yet there are many movies which are far more violent, and far more pretentious, that have been praised by these same critics. As I read Roger Ebert's review, it almost seemed as if he had to rationalize why he was offended. And being offended is one thing, but to be offended out of ignorance is something else. I am reminded of the the royal court in Amadeus when they were utterly shocked and offended that Mozart chose The Marriage of Figaro as his material for his opera. They had not heard the music, or seen the revamped play, or even tried to see it from Mozart's perspective. Instead, they stubbornly adhered to their own closed mindedness, even to the point of attempting to sabotage the production. This is a lot like Rosie O'Donnell when she intentionally spoiled the ending of the movie on live television in order to protest against its violence..HUH!?!! How ridiculous can a person get? There are literally thousands of things Rosie could protest against, but she had to single out the movie Fight Club. And how? By sabotaging the right of movie goers to watch it without its incredible plot twist being spoiled. This stunt of Rosie's was downright childish and pointless. She did not make the world a better place by doing that, she merely spoiled the experience for movie goers who actually could appreciate Fight Club for its genius. Yes, I said genius. It is definitely a work of genius. It exceeds most other movies in its ability to communicate feelings and ideas. It works as a drama and it works as a dark comedy. It plays like music and it looks like art. What most people don't understand about Fight Club is how it isn't just about one thing. It is about many different things. Maybe too many to think of altogether. The movie is like a prism in that it has so many different ways for light to hit it. If light hits the prism, many radiant colors emerge all over to enjoy. In order to enjoy Fight Club, you have to apply the light of your mind. Roger Ebert called it fascist, macho porn. Such a faux pas of an interpretation deserves ridicule. Clearly the lights in his head were turned off. Or perhaps I'm being unfair. Perhaps certain people were bound to misunderstand this film. I can accept that, but for emphasis, they did misunderstand it. I will talk now about some of the many things Fight Club is about. It is about loneliness, desperation, madness, rebellion, psychology, philosophy, pessimism, optimism, materialism, consumerism, conformity, fascism.. sure why not.. just not in the way Roger thinks of it, self-help, self-destruction, jealousy, envy, disillusionment, self-rationalization, wit, fantasy, pain, anxiety, self-deceit, dysfunctional personalities and relationships, the need to relate to something, and hypocrisy. I have not covered everything, but that's a start. From the very first time I saw it in the theater until now, Fight Club makes me think when I watch it. You can't call it mindless entertainment, even though many critics may want to "think" of it that way. As I was listing the things Fight Club is about, it dawned on me that one word descriptions cannot possibly do it justice. In order to accurately convey the different themes, a little more elaboration is necessary. I'll start with my original feelings about the movie. To me, Fight Club was the last remnant of the Punk- Grunge era. It's a dirty, gritty, intense movie packed with passionate angst and raw emotion. It's full of concepts and ideas, poetry and pain. The main character and narrator has no name, but throughout the movie he refers to himself with the name Jack, as in Jack's inflamed sense of jealousy. Since this is the case, we will call him Jack. The early scenes with the group therapy sessions and the self-awareness/self-help references indicate that for a time Jack had been trying to be a successful individual, fitting the mold of every consumer American trying to live out the American dream. However, Jack clearly is not happy in any way, shape or form, and his efforts in making himself happy may only be adding to his downward spiral. The scene where I think he has his official nervous breakdown that pushes him into insanity is on the plane where he fantasizes about the plane crashing. Directly after this intense and amazing sequence he encounters Tyler Durden for the first time. Tyler, we learn much later, is a manifestation of the person who has been waiting for so long to break free out of Jack's psyche. But when we first see Tyler we think he is merely the right person to come into Jack's life to put everything into perspective. Tyler's carefree, reckless attitude is enough to fully seduce Jack into not only trusting him completely, but looking to him as a mentor. In "reality", Jack is merely defining to himself the type of rebel he wants to be and is transforming into that rebel. On one level, perhaps the surface level, Fight Club is about a man who is extremely sick in the head and finds some sort of purification through his insanity, coming out sane on the other end. On a completely different level, Fight Club is a blatantly sarcastic, darkly comedic commentary on many aspects of society and modern culture. Consumerism is one of its primary targets. Jack talks in the beginning about decorating his house from his IKEA catalog and giving himself a cafe latte enema. This is the person who, like most of us, is trying to be the person they think they are supposed to be in order to be happy. But for Jack, the pursuit of happiness is precisely what makes him unhappy. How true is this phenomenon for most every human? For most, happiness is ever elusive, like a dog chasing its tail. Another aspect to the psychology of Fight Club is the idea that by hitting rock bottom, there is no longer any more room to worry about falling. By ruining your life on purpose, you are free from worrying about your life being ruined. And by self inflicting physical pain, it dulls emotional pain. This is a concept that is understood by self-mutilators. Although negative perhaps, there are so many emotional levels for a person to relate to in the movie. As another example, Jack has a triangular relationship with Tyler and his girlfriend Marla Singer. Jack both likes and hates Marla for various reasons. Tyler just sees her as a piece of meat. But to good ol' Marla, it's just herself and crazy Tyler. But here's the clincher: Tyler and Jack are the same person, except Jack doesn't know it and neither does the audience (at least initially) but Tyler knows, and doesn't want Jack to tell Marla. Sound complicated? And you thought you were screwed up. Fight Club is a movie you could reflect on for hours and still not come up with what the point of it is. And yet, why then is it so powerful? What makes it peirce so deeply on an emoional level? In some ways it's as much of an enigma as Citizen Kane (the movie most critics call the best of all time) because it's a fractured picture of a deeply complex person. Is there any way to pinpoint why everything is the way it is in Jack/Tyler's mind? Not a chance. The idea isn't to figure it out, but to leave the movie feeling tripped out. Yeah, I can't come up with another way to describe the feeling. Tripped out to the max. Fight Club is a head trip. Then, after having said all this stuff about raw emotional power, there is the plain and simple comedy of it. Yes, Fight Club is a dark comedy. And if you just take it for that, and try not to read into it too far (virtually impossible) but just sit back and enjoy it, you will still be able to appreciate it. I think that if the people who said it's too dark or too violent would've done that then they would've had a different perspective. Then again though, with a movie as extreme and unique as Fight Club, you have to expect people not to understand it or appreciate it.

I am a first-time poster here at Scanners and a long-time reader. I am obsessed with your blog. Before I do any school work I avidly read your posts. Enough gushing right? I don't have anything profound to say today, but I can't wait to watch Fight Club again. I knew there was something I wasn't getting from that movie, but I think it may go down as one of the best pieces of cinema ever. And regarding depression, I know I've never been depressed based on yours and everybody elses descriptions, but I do know that I become a tad depressed when I realize that I am unable to articulate my ideas about movies the way in which you and many of your frequent posters do. So thanks for being my voice at times and a friend through your writing.

This is Angry Alien's super-condensed version (with bunnies):

http://www.angryalien.com/aa/fightclubbuns.asp

Hey no one's talking about the short film - Fantastic work Jim! BTW, I think it's pretty damn clear (to my eyes at least) that FC is a satire of macho posturing, not an endorsement of it.

I believe there is a lot of sincerity in it's anti materialistic ideas but it also makes the case that going to the extreme of project mayhem is not the answer. The movie never tries to answer what is the answer or where is the proper balance between the two extremes, it is left for the viewer to decide.

In these types of discussions on the movie I never hear anyone refer to Fight Club as a love story. At the beginning of the movie (which takes place at the end of the story) the narrator clearly states "This is all because of a girl named Marla." He claims to be in search of a state of being where he has lost everything and is free to do anything, but he begins his journey after he gains something which is love. Only after the presence of this euphoria inducing emotion was he driven to do what he did. He knew he was unfulfilled before, but only after finding his love was the beast unleashed because he now saw something better that was worth fighting for.