Fight Club Analysis

Fight Club AnalysisThesis Statement An analysis of the word picture Fight Club reveals the ambiguity of its themes about novel life, masculinity and nihilistic delusion.equivocalness and Hope in David Finchers Fight ClubA decade later its release, David Finchers religious cult classic Fight Club still invites strong reciprocation among critics, moviegoers and cultural pundits. Released in 1999, the film chronicles the story of Edward Nortons insomniac white lift up worker as he gets drawn to the ultra-violence, uber-masculinity and outright nihilistic delusion promoted and dear by Tyler Durden, played with iconic swagger by Brad Pitt. hardly a(prenominal) recent films have elicited as overmuch strongly opposing opinions as Fight Club has, with various camps proclaiming it as a post- late masterpiece that documents the brutal emasculation of the serviceman male by a modern consumerist culture and the ways a man can fight back. Others destine it is a faux-intellectual and hyp ocritical attempt by the Hollywood machinery to appeal to mens baser impulses art object tacking on a moralist lesson at the end.Make no mistake, Fight Club attempts to raise a mirror at societys baptistry and invites careful reading material. It is above all, a message film. One that aims to say something as much as it wants to entertain. From this vantage point, it can be argued that the film does non fall easily within either the interpretations menti whizzd above. Fortunately and frustratingly the film is an indeterminate exercise. It offers very few clean thematic elements from which an easily digestible interpretation can be gleamed from.What of its message then, and does its ambiguity undermine or show this message?The films vote counter is a absolutely-eyed cog at a impasse job for a car manufacturer. He lives in a condominium spare of personality and filled with IKEA furniture. He is empty of feeling, seemingly overwhelmed by the demands of an outside world to buy more than, consume more in rewrite to be more. It is therefore no surprise that hes also an insomniac. To cure this, he goes to nightly meetings of various support groups for serious ailments. For a while this seems to work, as he himself notes, Every evening I died, and every evening I was born a cod, resurrected. These early scenes clearly illustrate a man upset in the wilderness of modern society, one who has to co-opt other peoples substantial pain so he can feel something for himself. Without pain, he is dead with it he feels alive.His attempts at relative normalcy are disrupted by two major events. The first one involves meeting Marla Singer, another good example at group meetings who becomes the only major female presence in the film. The second event is the first halfs most important one the vote counter meets the brash soap maker Tyler Durden. They strike an uneasy friendship and chore relationship making soaps and living together in Durdens dilapidated busines s firm at the outskirts of town.For the rest of the first half, the film focuses on the establishment of the tokenish fight club one that sprang from a drunken brawl where Durden asks the narrator to hit him. Pretty soon, underground fight clubs are established all over the country, filled with lost men who voluntarily subjected themselves to fighting and physiologic harm. With Tyler as their leader, and the narrator as the second-in-command, these men and saw the possibility of acquire their masculinity taken away from them by their nine-to-five jobs, family responsibilities and societal pressures to be successful. move up against modern societys emasculation, the film seems to say.It is with the events of the second half that things get even more manic, as Durden orders a series of attacks against corporate America via his Project Mayhem, kickoff with relatively harmless pranks and culminating in a full-blown act of terrorist act which involves blowing up the citys credit b anks. The narrator watches in horror as other than reasonable men are converted into a mindless cult bent on following Durdens every proclamation. He is the audiences surrogate at this point, one that recognizes that the events in his life are getting out of hand, and knows he must stop it if he is to salvage whats left of it.On the airfoil level, the film is an entertaining, often humorous and violent depiction of masculinity. It employs voiceover narration, flashy camerawork, energetic editing and sharp dialog to create a fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat experience that shows a mans increasingly dark journey to escape his humdrum and meaningless human existences only to be caught up with the schemes of a dangerous, messianic terrorist. The story is gripping, the images stylized, and the counselor-at-law superb. Because of these factors, the movie largely succeeds as a popcorn movie.It is with its deeper themes, and the decisions the movie makes to advert to these themes, that t he ambiguity is most apparent. The film wears its nihilism proudly, and yet it also shows that nihilism has to have its limits. That the fun has consequences. The film explicitly shows an innocent man being killed as a direct result of Project Mayhems actions. That is as much a condemnation of the characters and the audiences who might have rooted for them.It also suggests that modern life, and by extension the modern man, is less and less alive and an psyche and more of a long-running commercial for goods that have led us, in the rowing of Tyler Durden, chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we dont need. simply Fight Club is itself, a product. One thats marketed, distributed and obviously created to sell and gain profits. At worst, this suggests a highly hypocritical intention on the filmmakers part. At best, though, it can be seen as a dangerous risk for its makers to fleck the hand that feeds it.No discussion about Fight Club is deal without menti oning its famous twist. By showing the narrator and Tyler Durden as two sides of one broken individual, the film makes a powerful statement about identity element and how it can be destroyed by modern life. The films final beam of light shows the narrator resurrected as one man, holding Marla Singers hand. A woman who, via his Tyler Durden persona, he almost attempted to destroy. This seems to be films true and final point, that the cost of nihilism as a means to rebel against modern societys excesses does not have-to doe with the hope that can be found in real human relationships.