I am Jack’s high praise: a Fight Club review

“We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’ll all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars– but we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.” 

This line from Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt), the deuteragonist of the 1999 cult-classic Fight Club, perfectly encapsulates the mental attitude of the movie’s characters. And, while that attitude may only apply to a narrow set of people, it is an exaggeration of very common feelings: the thought that your life is going nowhere, and the contemplation of what it means to be alive. These thoughts resonate throughout our society, even if some choose not to admit it. And what is to be absolutely loved about this movie is that it gives no answers to these feelings. It only reinforces the fact that in the end, there is no eternal solution—only endless contemplation. 

graphic by eliot schlaack

The anonymous main character, The Narrator’s (Edward Norton) story follows as such: he is a late 20’s-early 30’s white-collar worker suffering from insomnia and depression. He is lost in this state. 

“When you have insomnia, you’re never really asleep… and you’re never really awake,” He says at one point in the movie. He drifts along with the passing of time, never really in the moment, feeling nothing. 

The Narrator’s world is flipped upside down when he meets an odd soap-maker named Tyler on a business trip. This strange man drastically reshapes the Narrator’s life, changing the way he views everything around him. The Narrator’s story represents someone completely dissatisfied with their life, striving to somehow better themselves in a cruel world—even if they are really just hurting themselves.  

Fight Club makes you want to go to a Fight Club. As you watch the movie, you find yourself drawn to the unlawful chaos that the characters take part in. It makes you want to buy a house in the middle of an industrial wasteland, start making soap, quit your job, and cause civil unrest for fun. It all seems like a blast—until it doesn’t. By the end of the movie, the illusion gives way to clarity: this lifestyle wasn’t the solution.