FIGHT CLUB REVIEW

Twenty years ago, a film defined a generation.

“WHEN YOU HAVE INSOMNIA, YOU ARE NEVER REALLY ASLEEP… AND YOU ARE NEVER REALLY AWAKE.”

An insomniac young executive starts attending self-help groups to get some sleep but ends up becoming addicted to these meetings. On a commercial flight, he meets Tyler Durden, an eccentric and self-confident soap salesman who teaches him to believe in himself more and influence other disillusioned and troubled people like him.

Fight Club is one of those unusual films, with several layers, that can be watched several times, where we notice something new in each session. At first, it seems like just something silly about a group of men who get together and exchange hits to the gut, but then we realize that it is a warning to the capitalist and consumerist society, which blinds and alienates people, seeking to turn them into zombies more concerned with what they will watch on TV than with the real problems of the world, such as hunger, war, violence, crime, and poverty.

Jack, the film’s solitary narrator, realizes the futility and insignificance of his life, working a meaningless job and living one day at a time, with no prospect other than buying more things for his already cluttered apartment. He tries to decide things like, “What kind of dining set defines me as a person?” Until Tyler Durden comes into his life and he comes to realize that all the social conventions he respected are nothing more than pure nonsense imposed by others.

“THIS IS YOUR LIFE AND IT’S ENDING ONE MINUTE AT A TIME.”

Tyler is the opposite of Jack. While one is the typical yuppy who obeys the rules and plays fair, Tyler is fearless and bold, not hesitating to do anything he wants and disobeying any norm or social convention, such as stealing a luxury sports car on the way out of the airport or simply breaking into an abandoned house, which he doesn’t even really know if it is abandoned. When Jack sets fire to his apartment due to an accident, the first person he calls is Tyler, who answers the phone while eating something (probably some kind of snack), in a display of extreme bad manners and lack of respect towards anyone. The two arrange to meet at Lou’s bar (which will have great importance throughout the film) and talk about the inevitable difficulties in life and how Jack’s apartment catching fire was a “tragedy” in Tyler’s words. to which Jack responds that the insurance will probably pay for everything. This leaves Tyler disappointed because he believes he is almost convincing Jack to let go of material things.

“I WANT YOU TO HIT ME AS HARD AS YOU CAN!”

As they leave Lou’s Bar, Tyler suggests that Jack spend the night at his house. And he takes the opportunity to suggest something unusual: “I want you to hit me as hard as you can!” Jack is shocked for a few moments but ends up fulfilling his new friend’s wish. After being punched in the ear, Tyler retaliates and punches Jack in the stomach, causing the other a lot of pain, but is grateful for the sensation. The two exchange punches for a long time and then share a beer, like good old friends.

“THE THINGS YOU OWN END UP OWNING YOU.”

The next night, after finishing their shifts, Jack and Tyler continue to gather outside Lou’s Bar to beat each other up, but now other curious and disillusioned onlookers watch and join in the fight.

Meanwhile, the two friends live in a dilapidated house on Paper Street, without a television, showering and brushing their teeth with filthy water and reading bizarre articles in a collection of musty, forgotten magazines in the corner, all written in the first person. “I am Jack’s colon”, “I am Jack’s broken heart”, etc.

“THE CONDOM IS THE CRYSTAL SLIPPER OF OUR GENERATION.”

In the self-help groups he attends, Jack meets Marla, another “tourist” like him, who attends the meetings just because “it’s cheaper than a movie and there’s free coffee”. He is uncomfortable with her presence and demands her to leave, threatening to expose her, to which she also threatens to “Expose” him. The two then agreed to share the groups’ schedules.

Marla is a character with a bizarre attitude. She sells stolen clothes to survive, orders pizzas in the names of dead people, and does absolutely nothing useful all day. The curious thing is that she ends up getting involved with Tyler and driving Jack crazy by having to listen to them having sex all the time.

“ADVERTISING MAKES US CHASE CARS AND CLOTHES, WORKING JOBS WE HATE, SO WE CAN BUY SHIT WE DON’T NEED.”

Fight Club gains new members, and now the fights take place in the basement of Lou’s Bar, where Tyler created rules for the club:

1. You do not talk about Fight Club.
2. You do NOT talk about Fight Club.
3. If someone says “Stop” or goes limp, taps out, the fight is over.
4. Only two guys to a fight.
5. One fight at a time.
6. No shirts, no shoes.
7. Fights will go on as long as they have to.
8. If this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight.

“IT’S ONLY AFTER WE’VE LOST EVERYTHING THAT WE ARE FREE TO DO ANYTHING”

The film makes a scathing critique of exacerbated consumerism and the control that companies and large corporations have over people. Corporations want us to be obedient and compliant, zombies ready to work for them and carry out their sinister agendas. When Jack sees the harm that his company causes others, using defective parts in cars to profit from insurance, even if some people die, he begins to understand that we are nothing compared to the desire for profit of these miserable people. Hence the famous phrase: “You are not your job!”, meaning that you don’t need to defend the company just because you work there.

Jack’s boss gets an unpleasant surprise when he decides to confront him, in one of the film’s most memorable scenes. After exposing all the company’s dirt, he starts fighting with himself, destroying his boss’s entire office, in a scene that takes us back to the beginning of the film, forcing the boss to decide to continue paying his salary to hush up the case.

From then on, Fight Club goes from an underground amateur club, where members just beat each other up to feel something in their empty lives, to a terrorist group, where Tyler plans vandalism actions for them to execute. A crime spree is set loose in the city, where members of Fight Club begin to destroy corporate art, luxury cars, and a whole lot of other treaties.

“WE ALL GREW UP BELIEVING WE WOULD BECOME MOVIE GODS AND ROCK STARS, BUT WE WON'T. WE ARE SLOWLY LEARNING THAT FACT. AND WE ARE VERY, VERY PISSED OFF”

The generation of the eighties and nineties, the so-called “lost generations”, are represented in the film as people without purpose, without direction in life. As Tyler himself says: “We are the middle children of history, man! No purpose or place. We didn’t have the Great War or the Great Depression. Our Great War is spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives.”

It’s the so-called consumerist generation X, more concerned only with earning money to spend on futile pleasures.

“YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL. YOU ARE NOT A BEAUTIFUL OR UNIQUE SNOWFLAKE. YOU ARE THE SAME DECOMPOSING ORGANIC MATTER AS EVERYTHING ELSE.”

If there is a lesson in Fight Club is that we are more than a simple image, or a simple job, and that we do not need to be slaves for our lives to have meaning. We ourselves must impose meaning on our lives, in the way we deem best. And we must always keep in mind that, one day, we will all die. What are you going to do about it?