"...There is nothing either good or
bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison."
-- "Hamlet" Act 2, scene 2
If you've ever suffered from clinical depression, you know the experience is impossible to convey to someone who hasn't also gone through it. It doesn't make sense. It's like trying to describe why you love somebody. How do you explain a lack of feeling, or interest, or pleasure, that is both numbing and excruciatingly painful? How do you account for a disconnection with the past and any conception of a future? It's not "living in the moment" -- it's being stuck in a moment from which you can't imagine any escape -- not just the feeling that this asphyxiating near-deadness will go on forever, but that you can't imagine ever having felt any other way (even though, logically, you know that is not possible). You can remember feeling pleasure -- no, make that "having felt pleasure" -- but you have no memory of what it actually felt like.
One of the (many) reasons I probably connect so strongly with David Fincher's "Fight Club" (1999) is that, by capturing clinical depression more accurately than any other movie I've ever seen (though Laurent Cantet's "Time Out" and Eric Steel's "The Bridge" delve mighty deep into that abyss), it helped shake me out of the grips of a depression that was sucking me down at the time. I was the only person in the theater convulsed with laughter from beginning to end, because it was liberating, exhilarating, to see the truth of my own inner experience reflected back at me in its funhouse mirror. I recognized myself in the movie, relished the psychological acuteness of what I was seeing, felt its black absurdity resonate in my poor, chemically imbalanced noggin. From the very first images deep inside the human brain, I felt it could not be about anything else, even though I didn't know where it was going to go from there.
(Spoilers? Oh, yes.)
Below is my 2 minute, 25 second distillation of what I see as the essence of "Fight Club." Notice that only one punch is thrown and that the physical/psychological violence is inner-directed (shrinks say depression is rage turned inward) and apocalyptic (small gestures are out of the question when your world is imploding). Press play:
"How's that working out for you? Being clever." -- Tyler Durden
"Fight Club" is, quite intentionally, a film that is too clever by half, and patently too amused by its own cleverness. That's also precisely what it is meant to be, as a comedy thattakes place entirely inside one immature young man's head -- a thirtysomething white-collar wage-slave Everyman (Edward Norton) who doesn't have a name but who (for reasons revealed in the movie) we'll call Jack. At the start of the movie, Jack says he hasn't slept for six weeks (which is not possible, so we know he's prone to exaggeration about his own experience). His insomnia has left him feeling that his life is "a copy of a copy of a copy," as his narration echoes away, fading out of the soundtrack even as he speaks it. A paper Starbucks coffee cup rides back and forth on the copy machine he's using, and everyone in the office takes a sip of their Starbucks in synch with the office machines.
The first time I saw the movie, up close to a mighty big screen in a sparsely populated theater, and I noticed what appeared to be a chemical splotch on the film, or possibly a bad splice, in this sequence. One or two others went by before I realized that this wasn't a damaged print (I've seen plenty of poorly inspected prints, even on opening days), but a character leaking into the picture. Those flashes of Tyler Durden (later addressed indirectly in the projection booth, where he points out a changeover mark on the print we're actually watching, and splices frames of pornography into family films) are something I've actually experienced when in depression. Senses are dulled, and sometimes -- just for a flash -- you may think you've seen something out of the corner of your eye that isn't there: a shadow, a bug, a person (see mirror scene in Polanski's "Repulsion"). You may think you're going insane. I do.
In the middle of a recent depression (I'm just coming out of one -- which is why I haven't been able to post at my accustomed pace), I had one of the most horrifying experiences of my life. I woke up convinced that I had murdered some people in a particularly bloody fashion. Hacked them apart. I didn't know who they were, and I didn't remember how I had done it, but I was awake and suddenly facing the reality of what I had done. But how could that be? I couldn't have repressed the memory of that, could I? As I started to wake up a little more, I thought: No, you didn't do it yourself, but you witnessed it.
Either way, it was too much to handle, but you didn't do anything about it. How could I have not reported what I saw? How could I have forgotten what I saw until just now, when it came flooding back into my consciousness like the blood from the elevator in "The Shining"? (Yes, several recent posts have been fallout from this dream.) It took me about two or three days to convince myself that this had been, in fact, a semi-waking dream. What's particularly odd to me is that I very rarely have dreams of violence -- although I was plagued by dreams of watching a jetliner fall out of the sky in the year before -- yes -- September 11, 2001. After that, they stopped. No, I don't believe in precognition, but there it is.
Later, after I was pretty sure I had neither committed nor witnessed mass murder (in real life, and not in the movies) I thought back to "Fight Club" and Jack's panic and guilt when he realizes he's been the one who, without being consciously aware of it, has unleashed a fascist/terrorist movement known as Project Mayhem, the fanatical members of which are implementing, under his direction, plans to bring down skyscrapers in Los Angeles. (More 9/11 imagery -- though two years before the actual event that so many people described as being so shocking and unbelievable that it was "like watching a movie." Yeah -- this movie.)
Prison by Ikea."Fight Club" begins with Jack feeling trapped in a rut that some people would recognize as true depression. I assume that Northwestern author Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote the novel on which the movie is based, has some first-hand experience with chronic depression -- which has nothing to do with feeling bummed about something that's happened in your life (though that can help trigger an episode). Palahniuk is not subtle, and neither is "Fight Club" -- but depression is not subtle, either. It's all-consuming, and the idea of somebody who could come along and punch you out of it, just so you could feel some kind of real contact with the world instead of seeing it from far away as though anesthetized remove, is a pretty good metaphor. Maybe only somebody who's experienced depression can fully get in tune with it. I don't know what it's like to not have experienced it.
"While both Tyler and Jack are capable of extended neo-macho riffs on the virtues of Fight Club, that doesn't prevent the whole concept from playing like the delusional rantings of testosterone-addicted thugs. Aside from the protracted beatings, the film is so vacuous and empty it's more depressing than provocative."
-- Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times (from the "Fight Club" DVD booklet)
"If I had a tumor I'd name it Marla."
-- Jack, "Fight Club"
The depressive state is beyond nihilistic (an adjective freely applied to "Fight Club"), rendering absolutely everything unexplainable, irrational, absurd and utterly meaningless. (It's recognizable in the suicidal soliloquies of "Hamlet": "How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!") But once you emerge from it, its bleakness and absurdity can seem quite funny (in a self-loathing/solipsistic kind of way). Trying to explain it to someone who hasn't experienced it is fruitless. But, even though it frightens people and makes them want to avoid me like the plague when I get onto the subject (or maybe that's just their excuse), I can't help but give it a shot whenever I start obsessing. For now I'll just say that it feels like being on a desolate planet, where the atmosphere itself is thick and toxic and hard to breathe. You can see the earth indistinctly, but it is unimaginably distant. You can't remember how long you've been on this planet, but you suspect that you may always have been, though intellectually you know that isn't possible. It just feels that way, and you can't remember feeling any other way.
So, back to Jack and, eventually, Tyler. Tyler is certainly Jack's Id, but he's also Jack's glib, sophomoric, idea of what he would like to be -- hence, the object of his hero-worship. Just before they exchange their first punches, Jack and Tyler have a cliched conversation in a bar about their essential nature as consumers. Jack describes his life in terms of a sofa, a decent stereo and wardrobe that was getting to be respectable: "I was close to being complete." Then it all blows up in his face. Tyler says (with insufferable adolescent pretentiousness), "The things you own, end up owning you." Is this a brilliant insight? Hardly. You should be laughing at the characters, not with them. It's part of what strikes me as so damned funny about "Fight Club": It is specifically about a (privileged, pouty, petulant, spoiled, incomplete, self-pitying) upper-middle-class white urban heterosexual male in his 30s trying to figure out who he is versus who he thinks he is supposed to be -- circa 1999, eve of the supposedly apocalyptic new millenium. You wonder why it's packed with exaggerated macho posturing? Look around. (The homoeroticism in the film is more accurately narcissism, and I find it fascinating that so many women seem to recognize the pinpoint truth of its portrayal of men than a lot of men do. Then again, who doesn't want to be as cool as Brad Pitt/Tyler Durden, an effortlessly beautiful man whose terrible, tacky wardrobe and bizarre hygiene both distort and perversely enhance his beauty and coolness? That bit with the rubber glove as he's having sex with Marla is hilarious -- an obscurely tantalizing sexual aid not unlike the buzzing box in "Belle de Jour.")
I think of the inspired "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" (and the brilliant "Pineapple Express"), two stoner-buddy adventures that are about (and, in fact, are) the movies these guys would make up while smoking a bong on the couch -- the movies they would like to see, and star in. (See Jean-Pierre Leaud's plaintive comment in Jean-Luc Godard's "Masculin-Feminin" about "the film we had dreamed, the film we all carried in our hearts, the film we wanted to make... and secretly wanted to live.") So when, for example, Harold is thrown in jail, his cellmate is of course a big black guy... who sits quietly in the corner reading "Essays on Civil Disobedience." Harold asks what he's in for. "For being black," he says. The joke is not so much that he's the antithesis threatening black thug we have been conditioned to expect in dumb teen comedies, and he is instead a mild-mannered, articulate, bespectacled intellectual who was arrested outside a Barnes & Noble and who winds up quoting the Desiderata -- a proto-New Age poster/plaque phenomenon of the 1970s akin to Kahil Gibran's "The Prophet" or "Love Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry." What's funny is the concept that you know the movie knows what a trite and belabored joke that is. The punch line is yet another well-timed reversal, a crass endorsement of racial stereotypes that, of course, isn't. (My complaint against the cliches of "American Beauty" is that I think they are intended to be taken at face value -- like the gruff military guy who turns out to be a closeted gay. But, as Tyler says, I could be wrong. But I don't see the evidence in the movie.)
As for the violence: Damn right it's pointless. That's the point. It's not about pummeling flesh, but about punching through a big ol' sack of psychological insulation. Why does Jack impulsively beat the crap out of Jared "Angel Face" Leto's gilt-framed puss? He says it out loud in the movie: "I felt like destroying something beautiful." Next question?
I know that what I've written here is at least as much about me as about "Fight Club" itself, but that's why I re-published the earlier entry first. I'm attempting to show how my response to "Fight Club" (which I still defend as a terrific movie) is informed -- or, if you prefer, influenced -- by my personal experience. I could say the same thing about other favorite movies, like Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" or Wim Wenders' "Kings of the Road" or Buster Keaton's "Our Hospitality." As I've said before, I don't expect to change anybody's opinion of "Fight Club," not only because views in either direction tend to be quite visceral (as they damned well should be), but because my take on it is so personal. I don't mean to use depression as a way to rationalize my enthusiasm for the film, but maybe I am to some extent. As with the depression itself, I can only try to explain what I experience.
* * * *
Endnote: I'd like to address some of the comments in the "Fight Over Fight Club" post. First of all, feel free to hate the movie. That's a perfectly healthy reaction to a film that, in its time, It is contemptible -- though not necessarily in the ways many of its detractors (i.e., most critics and audiences in 1999) have claimed. (How "violent" can a comedy about a guy beating up on himself with his bare fists really be?) Like David Cronenberg's "Crash," the movie was pilloried, even by many within the movie industry, who considered it damaging and dangerous. This is the context in which my 1999 article appeared.
According to Sharon Waxman's 2005 book "Rebels on the Backlot" (which, I admit, has to be taken with a grain of salt because some chapters are riddled with factual errors and misinterpretations), the heads of distribution and marketing at Fox "disliked the film intensely.":
Ed Norton recalled that in the very first marketing meeting for the film with Fincher and the studio, [marketing chief Robert] Harper opened the discussion with the following: "Can anyone tell me one f***king thing about this movie that is funny?" [...]And so on. Of course, I didn't know all of this when I first saw the movie, and was only aware of a tiny sliver of it when I wrote my 1999 article. But I'm not surprised. I still think a lot of people like it (and loathe it) for the wrong reasons. But they are not my reasons. If I read the movie the way many of its detractors do, I'd hate it, too.[Critic David Thompson] wondered if Fincher wasn't a terrorist of sorts; "I can't help wondering whether the social scientist in Mr. Fincher wouldn't be like the cat that swallowed the cream if a riot of copycat fisticuffs ensued.... David Fincher's bristling attitude is no defense against rubbish." [...]
[Critic] Stephen Hunter seemed to praise the movie in the Washington Post despite himself.... "Understand, I am not writing a defense. The movie is indefensible, which is what is so cool about it. It's a screed against all that's holy and noble in man, a yelp from the black hole." [...]
The issue migrated off the arts and leisure pages onto the opinion and editorial pages. "Fight Club" was repugnant. "Fight Club" was immoral. "Fight Club" was a disgrace. Even people within Hollywood were outraged. [...]
[Hollywood Reporter editor Anita Busch] wrote that the film "will become Washington's poster child for what's wrong with Hollywood. And Washington, for once, will be right.... The film is exactly the kind of product that lawmakers should target for being socially irresponsible in a nation that has deteriorated to the point of Columbine." Busch also presided over two news articles that slammed the film, including one that quoted producers and agents (anonymously, of course) saying the movie was "loathsome," "absolutely indefensible," and "deplorable on every level." [...]
The vice chairmen of Paramount's Motion Picture Group, Robert Friedman, pulled aside producer Art Linson at the Paramount commissary and pleaded, "How could you?"
The hyper-glossy/faux-grimy style of the movie precisely captures what it's about: commercial culture's ability to co-opt and capitalize upon anything remotely rebellious and individualistic, and turn it into consumer goods. (See how fast the major record labels subsumed the "counter-culture" of the 1960s, or how Hollywood emulated the "indie" spirit of "Easy Rider" or "Pulp Fiction," or how the music industry immediately embraced and absorbed Seattle's "grunge" scene and slapped it with the marketable mainstream "alternative" label.)
Why, you may ask, does the movie look like a GQ or Vanity Fair layout (or an Ikea catalog centerfold)? Why does it take what now look like easy potshots at Starbucks or Apple? Because it is indeed emulating the style it's criticizing, a world in which nuclear families themselves are franchises -- as Fight Club becomes. (In the case of the movie itself, the theatrical marketing campaign failed miserably.) Jack and Tyler rant and rave against consumer culture, Microsoft, Starbucks, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and the masturbation known as self-improvement -- but they exist in that world, and are products of it. As they walk past a naked Gucci boy ad on a bus stop, Jack asks Tyler: "If you could fight any celebrity, who would it be?" For Tyler it's Hemingway (a celebrity!), and for Jack it's "Shatner." Are these guys (er, is this guy) phony and hypocritical about the phoniness and hypocrisy of contemporary capitalist society? Yes. So is Holden Caulfield. That's part of the joke, and part of the poignancy.
* * * *
P.S. About my dream... I attribute it to some late-night conversations about the amazing documentary "The Staircase" and Errol Morris's "Standard Operating Procedure," then staying up very late the two previous nights and watching "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" and "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib." What can I say? I'm an impressionable fellow (and you know what happens to impressionable fellows; they lose their... bearings). There are themes about blood, guilt and repression/denial that run through all these documentaries, but perhaps the most powerful for me was "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" (the essential companion piece to Morris's film) in which soldiers stationed there described how they had to consider themselves already dead in order to stay there without going insane. Once they had shut down, out of necessity, the world seemed like a hallucination to them. They were numb, but also put in the position that Noah Cross asserts in "Chinatown": "Most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place they are capable of anything." What most terrifies me is the truth of that statement. (And I think it's one of the lessons of Abu Ghraib. There is no "them," only us.)
My dream-dilemma was, in some ways, the inverse of Hitchock's "Wrong Man" obsession. It wasn't that I was accused and convicted of something I didn't do, it was that I had done something that nobody, including myself, had previously known about. My sentence, you might say, was to learn how to live with that knowledge (I just saw "In Bruges" last night, my favorite movie so far this year) -- and my need to confess it, with the fear that no one would believe me because I didn't know how to find the evidence. If you've seen any of the above movies, you will detect some of the connections.
Especially odd: The very next week I started to watch the first season of "Heroes" on DVD. One of the characters has a split personality (which works nicely as a metaphor for manic depression) and basically lives my dream! It was pretty shocking to watch. She wakes up to find blood and bodies all over her garage studio, wonders who could have committed such atrocities, and then has to face the fact that it was herself (or her alternate self). Another character has nightmares of a nuclear explosion that devastates New York -- and in which he himself is the bomb that causes it. Watching these things was rather uncanny under the circumstances.
I somehow feel that my life will always be divided into before that dream (because it extended so far into my waking life) and after it. The way I look at it, I don't know (and hope I never do) what it's like to slaughter a bunch of people. But I know exactly what it feels like to have slaughtered them. Because I actually thought I had. And, like it or not, I can't just say, "Oh, it was only a dream" (only a movie, only a movie). I still have to live with what it felt like.
P.P.S. Please read critic Michael Atkinson's essay, "Ghost in the Shell," about his brief bout with depression. His experience doesn't quite mirror my own (maybe it's somewhat different for everybody), but it's one of the most insightful pieces I've ever seen on the subject.
Like you I've battled with various levels of depression. Many times these bouts would end in a dream/nightmare that would drive me to some level of hysteria upon waking. I'm sorry but a baby possessed by a demon that wishes only to kill is not fun, nor is witnessing your Mother being killed by a serial killer with an ice pic. A lot of what I dream ends up inspiring and influencing much of my own creative writings.
None of this hysteria rolls over into my real life. Though, as you did, I feel those strong emotions that go along with whatever happened in the dream. I once choked myself to death in a dream, hands around throat. Woke up thinking that I was the cause of the death of a hundred soldiers under my command - couldn't stop pacing around, told my parents after I awoke (yes, I had this dream when I was in High School!) But these dreams do meld with my depression and understanding of myself and the world around me. Sometimes I find these dreams exhilarating now because they feed so directly into my creative impulses, including my acting. That's why it's difficult for a film to actually scare me, because my own dreams do a much better job. Like I said before it can be thrilling, to feel those feelings, because for me in a depression I can't feel anything.
"Fight Club" actually much like the lesser film this year "Wanted" spoke to me in pretty profound ways. Both films contain gobs of violence but neither of them I felt were completely about the violence. Both I laughed at, and purged myself during.
They're great things, movies. If for no other reason than the ability that they have to release your demons for you.
I really appreciated this post Jim. You really summed up many of my thoughts and feelings on Fight Club to an almost exact degree. I thought I would share a few more thoughts of my own. It's refreshing to hear you articulate why Fight Club is a great movie and what it's all about. It's also maddeningly frustrating when someone such as Roger Ebert, our beloved favorite critic, makes the ultimate faux pas of his career and condemns Fight Club. I think the reason he doesn't get it is much the same reason why people don't get depression if they are not suffering from it themselves. Maybe to connect with Fight Club you have to have some of that same despair inside that Norton's character had. I can say personally that I did. Then again, I find it rather bizzare that Mr. Ebert understood Taxi Driver so well, when Fight Club has such a similar theme. And yet, in my opinion, Fight Club has more range than Taxi Driver. Contrary to what Ebert said about the satire being only in the first act, satire is the life blood of the entire movie. That the movie could be so comedic and sarcastic and yet touch so profoundly on depression and despair is a proof in itself of its genius. One of the things I think many people failed to appreciate about Fight Club is the way it savagely rips apart self-help books and programs. This struck a nerve with me because at the time I was a teenager and was absorbing myself on any kind of motivational self-help book I could find. One of the truths that Fight Club touches on so sharply is that self-help books can be easily more damaging than helpful. When a person tries to compensate for inner emptiness, sadness and loneliness by giving himself "positive affirmations" or by closing his eyes and finding his "happy place", he is only setting himself up to fall further down the pit of despair. I can say from personal experience that self-help books always made me feel worse. Self-help programs usually don't get to the root of a problem. They just offer glossy ways of dealing with the symptoms. This is why Norton's character get's sicker and sicker; (mentally and emotionally) because his pursuits of happiness and fullfillment are all being bulit on faulty foundations, (Ikea, Starbucks, his career, self-help programs)foundations that cannot possibly attend to his true needs (love, friendship, medication?). As Norton's character narrates, it becomes obvious that he is growing sick and tired of all these empty and futile methods he's been using to try and make himself happy. Now, in addition to depression and despair, he is getting angry. I think this in part explains the scene on the airplane where he fantasizes it crashing. His anger at his life and everything else is so strong, along with his depression, that he has this violent fantasy of his own plane crashing. I've always read this scene as him having a nervous breakdown. It's also symbolic of his emotional and mental state crashing down. Directly after the fantasy he meets Tyler Durden for the first time. Where before the plane crash fantasy/nervous breakdown he was on a downward spiral toward mental illness, after the plane crash fantasy/nervous breakdown he is in depths of mental illness. The movie's final scene is a refreshing one (in an ironic sort of way) because Norton's character shows the first evidence of true peace and contentment. As the buildings start to explode and fall and blood, sweat and bruises cover his face, Norton's character says "Marla, you've met me at a very strange time in my life." Yeah, there's an ironic and humorous tone there, but indeed this is Norton's character finaly gaining mental and emotional clarity. He recognizes he's messed up, and he recognizes that he's been dealing with it the wrong way. For any person who has spent a considerable amount of time dealing with depression, this scene no doubt is touching in the way it illustrates the madness that can consume us and yet the opportunity we still can find to pull out of that madness and regain our peace of mind. There's a lot more I can say about Fight Club, but I'll save it for another time. I could write a book about why Fight Club is a great movie, and I'm sure you could too. I am Jack's eager defence mechanism.
Jim,
I have dealt with depression as long as I can remember (I'm 21, so, not all that long!), and find that for me it comes and goes; there have been periods of weeks at a time where there seemed no hope, but other days the exact same feelings will come and go within an hour and I'm fine again. What is most striking is the feeling that there is no end possible--things are bad, and they will never get any better. And more to the point, that even if they did get better, it would only be a lie. On some level when I'm depressed I want to stay that way, because at least then I know myself; it's as if ever to be anything different would be a lie.
I was talking to a friend the other day trying to explain it, and I was feeling caught between wanting to feel better and wanting to feel much worse--because on some level, pain is easier to achieve than pleasure. And I quoted "Fight Club" to try to explain it:
"I felt like putting a bullet through the eyes of every Panda who wouldn't screw to save its species. I wanted to open the dump valves on oil tankers and smother all the French beaches I'd never see. I wanted to breathe smoke."
People who think that "Fight Club" is meant to be a call to arms are entirely missing the point, in my view; but that call to arms is meant to seem like a release. Jack's immature nihilism is the first thing that's ever happened in his life that was liberating, which is why the film looks so damn good: the adrenhaline rush from destroying rather than acquiring, from actually making some impact on the world, even if it's a negative one (especially if it's a negative one) is mostly fantasy. But there have been times where I felt practically immobile for weeks before finally snapping and destroying everything in my room, or punching through plater in walls; emotion needs release.
Other recent films I responded very strongly to include Woody Allen movies, and even more so Charlie Kaufman films, particularly "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine": his screenplays are really about an inability to escape one's own head, which seems to me to be as good a description of depression as anything. Some people criticize his movies for that reason, and I do understand that. But I just get chills thinking about the looping, circular monologue going through the fictionalized Charlie Kaufman's head in "Adaptation"; how much of it is "true" doesn't matter, in a way, because the character, at the very least, can't write about anything but himself, hence why the film is on some level just about its own structure. (Yes, of course the movie's hollow: it's the sound of one hand clapping. In the best way.) And "Eternal Sunshine" is on some days my favourite movie, ever, one which I love unreasonably for largely personal reasons; when I first saw it in theatres, I didn't believe that there was any possible romantic match for me. The relationship between Clementine and Joel was a revelation: it seemed so entirely right, for that woman to be powerful enough to cut through Joel's (and my?) self-obsessed morosity. The fact that it was brutally unhappy and self-destructive was, again, part of what made it believable. Entirely happy relationships seemed unattainable; this warts-and-all romance seemed possible. And I went on to have relationships remarkably similar to that; it's no longer my goal, but it is still a major emotional touchstone. (I read one critic attacking the film as being about a bunch of self-indulgent characters who deliberately enter into bad relationships, and felt a little personally offended--overidentify much?)
But the portrayal of depression that I identified most strongly with is actually in the sixth season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," which a lot of people hate; a lot of critics and fans who had previously supported this brilliant series jumped ship at this point. Basically though (spoilers) Buffy is brought back from the dead (where it was peaceful for her) and hates being back alive; the entire world seems first like a living hell and then a living purgatory to her; she distances herself from her friends, gets into a brutal self-destructive relationship, goes to work at a fast food job in great part because it's nothing but a daily grind with no room for imagination and no discernible future. The villains are (deliberately) extremely mundane; the jokes she makes are all tired; she has constant epiphanies about how to get out of her rut, and constantly vows to follow them but never does. The season's form even follows her mood--its primary emotion may be ennui--making it understandably difficult to watch, but for me entirely relatable, every moment. And meanwhile, all the supporting characters' lives crumble around hers, and on some level she feels responsible for each one; it's a worst-case-scenario story. And, interestingly enough, there are more than one episode that feature dreams or hallucinations relating to her killing others: her friends, an innocent girl. The only thing that makes her feel anything at all is violent flashes of pain and guilt.
I have to say that I've dipped pretty deeply into the depression pool myself, and I've never heard it described in a more instantly identifiable phrase than, "You can see the earth indistinctly, but it is unimaginably distant."
For me, Fight Club was about the pain of isolation - that feeling at 3 am that you can't sleep, can't stop thinking and don't have a single person you could call who could possibly understand. Jack gets so deep into that mire that he creates a second self to share it with.
I remember hearing a number of people say that "the best way out of depression is to behave as though you're no longer depressed," which is frequently both impossible and malarky. The final climactic explosions of the movie are symbolic of exactly what sort of irreversible actions can be taken by someone who is behaving as though they're no longer depressed.
I always thought that the upside of the ending is that Jack has broken out of his fever dream of Tyler Durden - by his own free will, no less - and discovered that he has something (at least) in the form of companionship in Marla, but the downside of the ending is that he'll have to step up to his responsibility in the future he's now laid out for himself and everyone else.
That's the part of depression that's always been hardest for me, personally - waking up from it, realizing how much of what you've already done (or how much time you might have "wasted") is your own and how much of it might have been avoided. But the realization of that always seems to galvanize me a little toward the next bout.
jim, I agree with (and like) much of what you've said about fight club, but i have to take umbrage, particularly, with the levels of irony you detect in the film ("Is this a brilliant insight? Hardly. You should be laughing at the characters, not with them.) I don't want to step on your truth that you've worked out, but my issue is: what's wrong with the direct, simplistic reading of this, as well as of other parts of the movie. While I'm sure there are some wisps of irony intended, what's wrong with the straightforward anti-consumerist, anti-emasculation sentiment. To me the strongest line in your review was where you revealed Apple and Ikea to be what the really are: the same damn thing as every other company, just with a smarter, more savvy marketing department. The insidious nature of all advertising, and in particular these almost-perfect, almost-legit kinds, is enough to make one (if one thinks about it enough) quickly revert back to primal instincts, through any means necessary, just to feel and approach something distinctly real and tangible.
So perhaps the 'end up owning you' quote is too simplistic for you, and for others, but i know that, for me, i need constant, daily reminding of such things. Carpe diem is a terrible and flat cliche, but, at the end of the day, is there any wiser wisdom than these ancient platitudes, if we really think about, divorced from the cheesy connotations.
Sorry for the ramble; I've been reading a book (by the ethologist Konrad Lorenz) which coincided quite nicely with your posts Jim. And, apologies beforehand, but i wanted to post a quote from the book:
"Crowded together in our huge modern cities, in the phantasmagoria of human faces, superimposed on each other and blurred, we no longer see the face of our neighbor. Our neighborly love becomes so diluted by a surfeit of neighbors that, in the end, not a trace of it is left. Anyone who still wants to feel affection for his fellow humans must concentrate it on a small number of friends, for we are not constituted that we can love all mankind, however right and ethical the exhortation to do so may be... 'Not to get emotionally involved' is one of the chief worries of large city people. This state of affairs, not quite avoidable for any of us, already bears the stamp of inhumanity. ... When this intentional screening-off from human contacts goes further, it leads not only to emotional entropy, but to the horrible manifestations of apathy daily reported in the press. The greater the overcrowding, the more urgent becomes the need for the individual 'not to get involved'.
Again, sorry for the length.
This and your previous article are the description and meaning of Fight Club I've been trying to convey to friends since it opened. You describe it much better than I ever have. From now on I'll just point them here.
The best description of depression I've ever read is William Styron's Darkness Visible. He really nails it.
I'm glad you enjoyed both The Staircase (riveting) and In Bruges.
"Control" I think has the best portrayal of clinical depression along with realistically showing how charismatic an "artistic depressive" can be. The long takes in beautiful black and white of the main character just staring into space were heartbreaking to sit through.
This is what film criticism should be. I'll agree that Pauline Kael could jump the gun sometimes, and it's annoying that she wouldn't watch a movie more than once, but the personal edge to her pieces is what made them so compelling.
I've never really understood why critics shy away from writing a piece that is a personal reaction to a film (aside from not wanting to share the personal). This is how we react to movies. We see them through our own lives. If you've never gone through a true depression, it might be difficult to see "Fight Club" the way that Jim sees it. I know that growing up with divorced parents has made "E.T." extremely personal. I doubt my relationship to that film would be quite the same had I grown up in a stable nuclear family.
But our responses to any given film don't even have to hinge on such grand things as divorce and depression. I've found that some films don't strike me simply because of the mood I'm in. This happened with "The Apartment". But when I went to see it in Grant Park in Chicago with a huge crowd, I fell in love with it.
Thanks for a great post. My opinion about "Fight Club" remains the same, but I think I'll see it a little differently next time.
Great Article Jim. Now I dont really understand the hate for this film, I mean what exactly are people going to the movies for, to be informed, this isnt PBS most movies are meant to be entertaining first. If they say something hey great but really most films are just out to entertain. Fight Club is entertaining, even people who hate it cant say its not. Ya it does say many things about society and consumerism like you pointed out and it does this well, but the reason i liked it was because I was entertained. If more people watched movies just for that they would probley enjoy movies like Fight Club more. Just my opinion. Thanks
Jim ---
Wow. All I can say is thanks for putting this piece -- and yourself -- out there. This is one beautifuly articulated essay.
I still don't like the movie, but what's so wonderful about your essay is that it just doesn't matter. This whole film buff/critic business is all subjective anyhow; that's what's so wonderful about it, and your essay articulates the joy and power film contains.
From now on I will look at Fight Club, not as a movie I dislike, but as the movie that helped pull you out of a moment of depression.
I really appreciate your essay, Jim. Keep it up!
Interesting piece Jim. I am sorry for your suffering. I also suffer from clinical depression but I never really made the connection when viewing the film. My distaste for the film did not derive from its violence, but the way it sexed up Marxist ideas and philosophy so it would appeal to college kids who would be drawn to the violence and the idea of a "fight club." Call it Marxism for Millenials. Guys my age (early 20s), girls too, often cite this as one of their favorite movies, they have the poster on their walls and the screensaver on their i-macs (apparently not cognizant of the irony) though not b/c of the reasons you've outlined above but because it's, well, "cool." While I wouldn't want to argue w/ anyone's personal response to a film, I don't think Tyler is clinically depressed but suffers the symptoms of depression b/c, according to the movie's worldview, he is a prisoner of a capitalist/consumer driven society and must start a revolution, change his life, burn his credit cards, etc. much like Marx believed the proletariat needed to break out of its prison of industrial revolution era capitalism. To me its all nonsense, but to many people my age this is an appealing phiolosophy as it is for many of the professors teaching these kids. Though, thankfully, few else. But your post has incited my curiosity, and despite how scrofulous I find the film to be, I will give it another watch w/ your insights in mind. God knows I have lots of friends who will be able to lend me a copy of their DVD (or at least allow me to download a copy which they illegally acquired on their i-macs).
Incredible article, Jim. I can't honestly say that I now like the film any more, but as usual my respect for you has only gone up. For me, Fight Club is very much one of those films with a story too grotesque told in too grotesque a manner with too much amorality for me. A Clockwork Orange is one of those for me, too, but there's no doubt in my mind that Kubrick's work is more important than Fincher's. So, in that respect, I would call ACO the 'better' film.
Conversely, it's not a film whose craft I can deny, nor would I deny its power. In that regard I respect it even though I pretty much hate it. I just recall while I was watching it thinking the director is too talented for such material. And it strikes me he made a huge leap forward with Zodiac, a wonderful movie. I look forward to his Benjamin Button very much.
I noticed that "Fight Club" has gotten a cult following and there are cult films that I think are works of art that show that critics can sometimes be idiots such as "Blade Runner","Once Upon a Time in the West" and "It's a Wonderful life" and their are cult films that make me take side with the skeptical critics such as "Harold and Maude" and "Vanishing Point".I think that there are films out there that aren't very well known that are classics but at the same time I'm not one of those people who slag what is popular and champion what is not very well known or regarded that's just not me.I have seen bits and pieces of Fight Club on TV and found it interesting and unpleasant(especially in those scenes when edward norton's character goes to testicular cancer meetings)but when I get the chance I will see all of it(and out of the Fincher films I've seen, I was impressed by "Se7en" and sorta kinda liked "The Game").
Also to Nathan:You mentioned film critism that is personal,I sometimes have problems with Halliwell's Movie Guide because it feels like it is criticism done by a machine because I don't know who decides the star ratings and writes analysis's on the films because the book never says and it does feel like it has taste buds or preferences of its own.I can declare the book readable but not reliable and shockingly they gave some great movies one or two stars(Just to let everyone know "Fight Club" got one star).
Damn you Jim. This piece is incredibly persuasive...and thorough.
Are you on meds? I take 3 Fluoxetine a day for clinical depression, and find that, if I even miss taking them the same time as the previous day by a few hours, my mind will retract into a nihilistic womb swirling with abstract notions of suicide.
When I first saw "Fight Club" I was a freshman in a Jesuit (Roman Catholic agnostic) highschool and saw lots of kids embracing "Fight Club" for all the wrong reasons; kids were citing Tyler Durden unironically as their senior quotes. The universal embracing of "Fight Club" at face value by frat boys, cretins, boorish slobs, etc. poisoned the well of appreciation for David Fincher's film, for me at least.
But I will revisit it.
P.S. "In Bruges" is my favorite movie of the year so far as well. I think it is the most clever and self-reflexive movie about hitmen since "Pulp Fiction."
P.P.S. You should check out "Mad Men" on AMC. I think you'd like it quite a bit.
After reading this, I'll have to give Fight Club (yet) another shot. I think my dislike for the film grows from the same place as your appreciation. The difference is that, unlike you, I failed to relate with Narrator.
By the time I saw the film on opening night, my life had already been derailed by severe depression. Between bouts, when I wasn't severely disconnected, I longed for the creature comforts that Narrator's white-collar lifestyle provided
I didn't relate the character's disconnection to my own condition but instead the ultimately self-satisfied ennui that afflicted so many of my former friends as they transitioned into a middle-class lifestyle. This left me resenting the character, definitely not empathizing with him. I'll try another viewing with your essay in mind.
I meant Venlafaxine (Effexor XR).
Jim,
Wonderful, astute post. I'm also a twenty-something (27 actually. Is the "something" a really lame way of denying aging?) who has struggled with depression for most of my conscious life. (12 and on, with long disappearances and returns.)
I'm good now, after not being good. I deeply appreciate how forthright and honest you are about your own experiences with it. The biggest pain of depression is the sense of isolation and mania that comes with it. And that's why you rightly champion this deeply misunderstood (often by its "fans") film.
I saw it the first week it came out. More than any film I've seen, it imprinted in my subconscious. (This is not to say that other films could not. Vertigo and the Seventh Seal should be at this level, but the lack of criticism around Fight Club when I saw it made the experience less intellectual and more psychological.) I loved it but I could not articulate it. And I came back to it again and again.
I'm a fairly avowed pacifist and this has made my adulation for the film perplexing to many. But seeing the film as an inner struggle is really the whole meat of the matter. Narrator does not endorse the behavior about him. Nor does he condemn it. It is occurring while he is comatose. It is a long, long wake-up call for a man who has abandoned himself and been placed into society as a useful tool.
The amazing thing about it all is that this film is one of a few that pushed me over the edge to a useful path (public service and writing). Or at least one that is useful to me. So, I can say, yeah I like the movie.
Jim, yet another depressive chiming in. I have no strong feelings about Fight Club (I saw it once, thought it good interspersed with brilliant) and was bewildered by the Chattering Class handwringing while despairing of the Neanderthals who embraced the heartless destruction. One thing I haven't seen discussed much is Marla as a character.
Maybe it's because I'm female, but Marla made a huge impression on me. She doesn't seem to be important to many male viewers as a stand alone character, but the fact that such a female exists in a modern American movie is really mind blowing. She smokes, steals, unrepentantly fucks Tyler every which way but Sunday, and she isn't killed or punished at the end! How did this happen? It's like the filmmakers (deliberately or not) are saying that something about this woman, who is in the same nihilistic nightmare landscape as the male protaganists, provides an inner clench that the men simply do not possess. In a strange way, she cheered me up. I may crash to the bottom, but as long as I can steal clothes from the laundromat and food from senior shut ins, I can make it just a little further.
I too live here in Seattle and would love to accompany you to a film if you ever want to.
Incredible, wonderful post and I'll respond to it at length when I have the time tonight, but I have to say your dream reminds me more than anything else of the Coen Brothers' third-greatest masterpiece (besides Miller's Crossing and NCFOM), the horrifically brilliant Blood Simple. I could have sworn I'd had dreams before I saw that film that involved nearly the exact same predicament John Getz gets (heh, heh, Getz gets, Mencia or Dane Cook would probably find that the pinnacle of human existence and then plagiarize it) himself into, and I connected so strongly with that film I almost couldn't believe I was watching it.
"Is this a brilliant insight? Hardly. You should be laughing at the characters, not with them."...this is exactly the point that the majority of "Fight Club" detractors seem to miss. Tyler, who looks like a punked up G.Q. model and sounds like a cross between a self help guru and sport drink advertisement, is hardly the revolutionary that he thinks he is. "Fight Club" is SATIRE folks, and very good satire.
Of course, if you look at some of the marketing for the film or listen to some of its fans ramble about how cool it is while missing the point, you might get the wrong idea about what "Fight Club" really is. I'm not sure anybody knows what to do with it, which is why it's such a great piece of work. But it makes it tough to come down too hard on it's detractors, even if I think they'd actually like what Fincher has to say if they really listened.
By the way, I'd name "Fight Club" as one of the best book to film adaptations ever. The film actually managed to improve on the book in some ways, especially in the way that the cinematography and acting deepen the satire. (Brad Pitt really does come across as a deranged fashion model throughout much of the film. Palanuck never manages to get that kind of pop culture nuance on the page.)
Everybody: These comments are amazing, and I'm extremely grateful and the thought and effort that have gone into them. It's going to take me a bit to digest them all. But thanks!
it does feel like it has taste buds or preferences
Forgive me for my typing error I meant it doesn't feel like it has taste buds or preferences
I don't have anything to add to your great piece or to these amazing comments except: thanks for appreciating "Fight Club" for what it is rather than condemning it based on misunderstanding or false assumptions; thanks for being so giving of yourself (without being maudlin -- a hell of a trick), and thanks for insisting, through your writing, that a critic is ultimately just a viewer with a byline and more time in the trenches.
Aaron B - I definitely agree with your issues with FC's hipster Marxism. It's the major reason why I felt the book was worse than the movie. Fight Club is one of the few instances where the movie is much superior to the book (totally separate subject - but American Psycho is another example).
The book seemed to go on and on taking its theories quite seriously, only to finish on a cop-out worthy of Dallas "It was all in my head!" I think Fincher's choices, so brilliantly explicated by Jim, and the winking performances by all the principles provide enough distance between Tyler Durden's moronic philosophy, and the true themes of the movie.
Harry Lime - Definitely second you on "Bruges." Excellent take on the truly tired-out genre of hit-men comedies. I can see it being quoted for decades.
Good stuff Jim. I read this and can't help but feel like something is missing from a lot of the other criticism I read. However, whether I enjoy what I'm reading or not, I hadn't realized how much I'd come to depend the continued writing of my favorite critics. These last couple of weeks have felt slow here; I'd check this blog and, sort of childishly, say "what is Jim doing!?" Of course you come back with a fantastic piece. Can't add a lot to what's already here, just wanted to say glad you're back.
I will say that I'm glad to see the "In Bruges" love, also my favorite of the year so far. Talking about it being quoted years from now... I know I'll be. Those who've been to the theater recently may have seen the Ludacris/Tommy Lee "Battleground Earth" ad. I couldn't help but tell my friends, "So there's gonna be a war between all the whites and all the blacks." Yeah, I was proud of that one.
Steven, it's strange that you bring up "American Psycho" because that is another piece of savage satire that is often hailed and condemned for the wrong reasons.
"An author's irony often conceals his glee. This concealment is perhaps the chief function of irony." (Iris Murdoch)
Bret Easton Ellis engages in profoundly imaginative ways to mutilate, torture, murder, and violate human flesh in his novel, a novel which is often decried for its heinous depictions of sadism. I had a friend that criticized the novel for being "excessive." Yeah. That's the point: the unquenchable appetite of the titular character is not satiated by the very pinnacle of depraved catharsis. I think of the film version as a compromised and truncated G-rated version of the novel. I like the film very much, though. However, irony or satire seems to allow the writer or artist to indulge in a guilty pleasure while shielding themselves behind a politically correct wall. I don't presume to know whether David Fincher secretly gets a perverse glee out of depicting sensational nihilistic industrial brutality or if Bret Easton Ellis is a closet sadist with an imagination that demands he be put into a maximum security prison. But certainly, the possiblity is there that these artists who we view as beacons of sophistication are relishing the very things that the more cretinous admirers misinterpret joyfully.
It is this skepticism I have about *Fincher's perspective on the proceedings (he seems to be having just a little too much fun with the fuck-you-nastiness and the senseless mayhem) that also makes me a little hesitant about *Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" (again, there seems to be a disturbing kind of malevolent pleasure in depicting the disgraceful and reprehensible terrorizing perpetrated by Alex, a person who Kubrick ostensibly finds loathsome, right Stanley? Right?)
*I adore and worship both Stanley Kubrick and David Fincher
I'm yet another one...
I first saw Fight Club, by myself, when I was living in Austin. First time living anywhere but Dallas, and I tended to see a lot of movies alone during that time... mostly in the afternoon during the week, which is the best and also loneliest time to see a movie.
The movie shook the hell out of me, made me laugh, made me gawk... and for the next couple of weeks anyone that got within earshot of me heard all about it. I went and got the soundtrack THAT NIGHT, a rarity that has not been repeated. I've cooled on the movie since then -- still admire it, but the visceral love is gone. This post helped remind me why I loved it so much in the first place.
I didn't know it at the time, but when I saw this movie for the first time I was a couple months away from the biggest crash of my life. The one people didn't think I was going to come out of.
I'm also glad to hear you liked In Bruges so much. I think objectively speaking it's a pretty shabby movie, and the marketing was just atrocious, but something about it gripped me so powerfully that I was reeling for days. It's a Top 3 of 2008 for me, easily, and may rise higher on a second viewing.
Sorry to completely ignore your fine writing about Fight Club, but I just wanted to chime in with the observation that the best film I have ever seen about profound depression is Louis Malle's "The Fire Within." I have rarely felt such a chill at watching a movie because it so perfectly articulated an experience that is nearly impossible to articulate and to do with a subtlety and depth that requires great understanding and empathy from the filmmakers.
I had a dream once in which I had spent some time kidnapped as a child. After the dream, eating breakfast, I wasn't sure whether it had happened or not.
By the way, that first episode of heroes seems to echo Satoshi Kon's brilliant Perfect Blue. Watch it some night as a double feature with Fight Club. Perfect Blue comes as a very, very high recommendation from me to you.
And speaking of Fight Club, you reminded me of the frustration I had while trying to explain to someone (I forget who) why Tyler disappeared after Jack shot himself. They seemed to think Jack tricked Tyler. I tried in vain to persuade them that Jack had become braver than Tyler and so Tyler was outmoded, out-performed, no longer had a purpose.
Youre right about humor being the only sense left when youre depressed. Im trying to draw my way out of one at the moment.
http://notimeforclocks.wordpress.com/2008/07/26/8/
Here's a humorous parody and criticism of Fight Club worth watching:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ2GNk5zPuE
Harry, I have the same sort of feelings toward Clockwork, and the last time I did a big Kubrick revisit (on the occasion of that latest box set last year, of course) it only confirmed for me that that's the only Big K film that's dimmed for me. It has one point that it makes over and over again like a cudgel, and it's unpleasant and disturbing not in a way that makes me ponder, but in a way that reminds me that when one sets out to explore the darker realms of one's humanity one must take extra care not to get sucked in, because, yeah, those dark impulses are in us. The debate over how to depict them and whether depicting them at all does more to exorcise or exacerbate them will, I think, never be solved, because at heart it comes down to individual cases. I'd agree that Fight Club makes it fairly clear that it thinks that following those impulses has a high cost. It does get a little fuzzy in that while one can plausibly posit that the entire story takes place in the Narrator's head, that's never made clear - and if it is, where does the fantasy end...before or after those buildings come down?
Which brings up the problem of dragging other people into your s**t. Sorry, but when that line is crossed things get truly ugly...and yes, I too speak from personal experience. I could certainly relate to a recent letter in R. Ebert's Reader Mail section (even though I think the issue is more complex than this), titled "The Ascent of Vulgarity," especially this bit about "Wanted": "Is that what we're moving towards? A world where everyone is willing to do anything to anyone in the name of self-help?" This era we're in is the very definition of "interesting times," and for sure those aforementioned darker impulses might make living a life without thought for consequence seem attractive - so cool, so simple. Go ahead, try it. See what happens.
Patrick,
Good comments about American Psycho. In highschool I had a study hall with an awkward, lonely guy who kept to himself but loved raving about this book. He loved the empty materialism and repetitive desire to tear all of his meaningless standards apart. One day this guy broke down in studyhall, confessing to me that when people were talking around him at lunch, he thought to himself "what is the point to life?" He and I weren't friends, he just needed to say something about what he was feeling. Maybe American Psycho helped him discover some of that self-loathing and anger. It turns out I'm a counselor (case manager really) now because I identify with a lot of what my clients feel and what these movies bring up.
I also agree that Fincher and Kubrick do relish the push back in their films. Jim and Atkinson bring up how people treat you like a leper if you tell them about personal demons. These films express an anger not only to conform to a more convenient, false happiness but also the abandonment and isolation that comes with it.
Alex,
Just want to point out that I haven't seen American Psycho, but probably will reading the praise here. Steven Scott first brought it up.
Thanks for the interesting article, Jim. I'm really fascinated by the polarised reactions to 'Fight Club'. In some ways it's a fairly conventional scenario. We have a wilfully destructive character with a plan to cause mayhem and chaos and a more reasonable kind of guy trying to prevent it. It ends with the 'good' guy shooting the 'bad' guy. The only difference is that the two are the same person. So, if the controversy is not about the destructive acts shown in the film (which are standard), what is the problem? Is it in the idea that good and evil can exist within the same person and that the line is not as clear as we're usually led to believe??
Reading your article, I was reminded by a book called "The Sane Society" by the psychotherapist Erich Fromm. The book argues that what are typically classed as psychological illnesses or abnormalities may be perfectly appropriate responses to the alienating aspects of modern life. It occured to me that Tyler/Jack seems like a guy who has correctly diagnosed that he has a serious problem, but cannot quite determine whether the disease is in himself or in the world around him. I think that you can view the whole film as an expression of his internal struggle and the second half seems like a truthful depiction of the kind of fantasy that would appeal to a male psyche that has been suppressed and rendered powerless. Morally, I think that any misgivings that we might have about the contents of his fantasy are redeemed by the fact that Jack sees the problem too and ultimately takes control over those aspects of himself that produced it. So, for me, the film does not have much of a case to answer and scores points for being honest about the psychology of alienation which seem to run through the veins of the film. I don't quite get why people are outraged by the idea of good people being tempted by evil. That stuff is straight out of the bible.
Nice article, though i think jack suffers from chronic insomnia, not really depression, though the two do sort of interlink and maybe the insomnia leads to the depression. He does also play host to a number of other different mental illnesses though (Psychosis, Schizophrenia, Multiple Personality Disorder) so its sort of hard to tell.
We want you, not your money.
As long as you're at fight club, you're not how much money you've got in the bank.
You're not your job.
You're not your family, and you're not who you tell yourself.
You're not your name.
You're not your problems.
You're not your age.
You're not your hopes.
You will not be saved.
We are all going to die, someday.
What will you wish you'd done before you died?
http://last-fight-club.blogspot.com/
I am just going to say, I loved your whole article (I just found your site today, and I´ve been reading some of your stuff around for some while now, and I am enjoying it all, but this might be the most dynamic, entertaining, and relatable post yet).
Also, what do you think about The Hours? I remember when I was looking at reviews back then how I would make a similar distinction, analyizing reviews and concluding that those who hadn't liked it were most likely to never have suffered from depression.
Excellent explanation on depression using the block buster movie "Fight club" as a mirror. thumbs up!!
just fyi, the buildings he blows up are in miami, where the movie is set, not los angeles.
JE: I don't know where the movie is supposedly set, or even if the city is identified, but that's definitely Los Angeles on the screen. That's where it was shot.
Wow great article..I'm a little late posting here but I figured I'd comment.
Fight Club is not meant to be a life story. It's a satiric metaphor that brilliantly describes what those of us who are emotionally unhealthy feel. The humor is probably only understood and related to by those who experience mental instability (such as depression) themselves.
We want to hit rock bottom so as not to fall anymore. We want physical pain and punishment to distract ourselves from the emotional numbness stuck in our minds. The idea of death becomes as accepted as a hopeless, empty life.
I too, like many other posters, have had depressive episodes. Once stuck in one, they're seems to be no way out. Can anyone relate to mornings of not wanting to get out of bed because there seems to be no point? Staying awake late at night picking out every mistake and flaw you've ever made in your life?
Depression, among other things, is like drug addiction. We all want to leave it behind and some do...But once affected it stays with an individual his or her whole life. All it takes is one small event to trigger a "Relapse" of hopelessness.
Fight club touches on this perfectly. The nihilism displayed in the movie is exactly how the (or maybe just my) mind feels. It wants nothing. The only emotion it feels is pain and apathy. The only emotion it knows how to emit is pain and apathy. Material objects are simply just that...material objects. They lead to no sense of permanent fulfillment.
If anything, the movie acted as a window for how I've felt. Maybe that's why I can relate so strongly to it's theme and ideas...
Just wanted you to know that I found this site out of sheer happenstance. I should be sleeping. I'm sick, I have a deadline on a big project that hits by the end of the year. You know, closed half my tickets on the active item list?
You made me stop and think. Wanted to say thank-you. It's been a while since I've been able to sit down and think about how all of this mess has happened.
I try to escape in my work, and as a programmer, it is pretty easy. You can always find more validation, more features. More, more, and more. And everyone wants to take take take.
Sometimes that huge engine that keeps running in my head, predicting people and their needs, has to stop, and just look around with "WTF!?!" written on it's forehead.
Have a good night. We are all screwed up. Sometimes we find a way to escape. Some people think I'm crazy when I talk about this. But I have sides of my personality, that are completely different.. I even talk about them with different names. >.>
Maybe not everyone gets so in tune with those other actions, and subscribe to them being attributed entirely to another person inside themselves. Maybe that's where I'm crazy, but I can tell you this;
Human men, have commmitted the worst violent acts we could ever imagine, yet most of those men still had families they went home to, wives that they loved and daughters that they cherished.
You cannot fight without that complexity, and since we no longer fight in civilized society, the need for males now to create a kind of "tyler"-like persona will only grow.
To quote Apocalypse now.
"And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us."
great movie with a nice twist at the end.
First off I would like to thank Jim for this amazing article, though I am late to find it. I think I'm a bit younger then the other 44 people praising your article (being as im only 14) but i agree with them on the fact that you recognized Fight Club for the right reasons, not the typical "awesome violence" persona most people have attatched to it.
Oh and Gm_ftw,
I think the the Narrators chronic insomnia is a result of the manic depression he was suffering, but he didn't quite realize that he was depressed because he was stuck in a box of sorts and didn't know how to break out.
Which is why he creates Tyler.
I have to say, you know your article/blog is good when you get 45 intelligent responses. I can identify with Fight Club simply because it reflects my life in one simple way. The life of Jack is so introverted, that he can't even see what he's doing to destroy himself and the world around him.
What I question... is that really such a bad thing?
I am Jack's ... oh never mind.