The twentieth century was a century of change, a century marked by wars at the beginning and by a frenzied technological advance in its end; breakthrough that led to the consumer society we know today. The Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999) closed this century and marked the beginning of the 21st century in a wild, brutal and very hopeless way. Each phrase, each scene, each hit ... everything, absolutely everything that presents generates a reaction in the spectator
The club of the fight supposes a hard critic to the society, a hard blow for many of us that, in occasions, we felt identified with the personage without name that incarnates a magnificent Edward Norton. Many criticized the film, many felt uncomfortable and others saw in it a masterpiece that was the perfect finishing touch for the end of the 20th century.
No, it's not a movie to watch calmly eating popcorn, nor is it a movie that awakens the most forced sentimentality of cinema; It is a film that awakens, in the strictest sense of the word, the viewer. Already the credits warn us that we are going to attend an authentic pang to our ego, to our stomach.
The main character, whose name is not mentioned, is the faithful reflection of a man victim of the time in which he lives: slave of his work, suffers from insomnia and wastes his time in buying objects from IKEA. His only respite is found by going to group therapies in which people suffering from diseases such as cancer come together to make their situation more bearable.
All this will change when he meets Marla, key character in the film, and, later, Tyler Durden (or himself). Due to the complexity of the film, it is not advisable to continue reading if the film has not been seen, because the article contains spoilers.
Gray, dark, uncomfortable and nauseating, The club of the fight is a real sadistic laugh to everything that surrounds us, to the world as we know it, to that consumer society of which we are slaves. It takes us into the diseases of our time, a time when you are what you have.
David Fincher and his unmissable trio of actors: Helena Bonham Carter, Edward Norton and Brad Pitt managed to capture the essence of the late 90's, anticipate what was to come, immersing ourselves in a dark club full of blood and self-destruction.
The contemporary disease
"We live in a sick world and we are sick" so we could summarize the feeling left in us The fight club. The film is presented as an introspective narrative narrated by its protagonist, however, this introspection has, in turn, a certain universality. Despite being narrated in first person, the protagonist does not say his name and is presented as a man of the most common: he lives alone in an apartment in a big city, works for a major automotive company as an expert, suffers insomnia and spends your money to buy.
This characterization is quite universal, in the same way, not knowing his name, we transfer the story of his "I" to ours, making a retrospective of our own life. The protagonist lives in a world that we know, there is no fantasy or artifice, it is our own daily reality. Their "evils" are our ills or those of many of the people we know.
His main problem is insomnia, his doctor refuses to continue prescribing sleeping pills and opts to go to group therapies for people with cancer.
There, he meets Bob, a man who, after suffering from testicular cancer, has lost his masculinity, his testicles have been amputated and, because of the treatment, he has developed breasts. The protagonist feels relieved along with these people and, finally, manages to fall asleep.
He does not even know what the reason for his insomnia is, he does not know the root of the problem; The only thing she knows is that, in these therapies, she finds a space of peace, a place to mourn, something that, until recently, seemed to be forbidden to men, since crying was synonymous with femininity. We live in a frantic world, we consume to feel good, we have everything and yet, every day is more frequent to hear words such as: anxiety, stress, insomnia, depression ... Such are the diseases of our era, this is our protagonist.
Just when it seems that the situation is controlled and manages to deal with their problem, Marla appears, the woman who will cause that peace to fall apart, to destabilize and, once again, to reappear insomnia. Marla is like him, she is a woman for whom life is meaningless, she waits for death and her biggest pain is that it does not come. She also goes to these therapies, is a tourist more.
Why is Marla a threat? Because Marla is the living image of herself, it is the image of her lie and, if it is discovered, her entire center of stability and peace will disappear. The rejection that Marla produces is a rejection of himself; Marla even goes to testicular cancer therapy, who will believe that a woman has suffered testicular cancer?
That gall, that way of taking advantage of the pain of others to alleviate their own is what makes the protagonist crazy and is simply because Marla is the feminine version of himself.
The fight club, destroying capitalism
And after Marla, Tyler Durden appears, an attractive, strong man who lives outside the norms and the system; He makes soap, he lives in a house that could be classified as a ruin and he always does what he wants.
Tyler is the antithesis of our era, it is the absolute rejection of capitalism, the modern man who lives slave to his work to be able to buy material things that, supposedly, fill his inner emptiness.
Together they will start the fight club, the new therapy group of the protagonist. A few meetings in which various men are seen with the sole purpose of taking out their wildest side, their beast side based on blows. Tyler is the guru of this group, the spiritual guide, the one in charge of taking out all the anger and all the rage that is inside these men.
These fights will help men to free themselves from social pressures, to let off the slavery they live in, not to think and simply to let themselves be carried away by their most violent side. As Tyler explains, the cinema has made us believe that we could be rock stars, famous actors ... The media have set too high a goal for us and, in the meantime, we are content to lock ourselves in an office and have enough to buy, to be someone.
These insomnia problems, that contemporary illness of the protagonist, have caused his personality to unfold, to create a new "me", to invent Tyler. A dissociative disorder that makes us think of a kind of Lord Hyde updated, more handsome, stronger and that represents all those hidden desires of the character, all that accumulated anger for years towards society and the world around him.
Beyond the fights, a conspiracy appears, a series of attacks is planned with a deep feeling of freedom, of anarchy; attacks that do not go against people, but that seek to destroy large companies, buildings and symbols of contemporary slavery.
The club of the struggle is a twinge, a nihilistic discourse, an attack at the end of the century and at the beginning of the next; a hard blow for Hollywood, for capitalism and for ourselves. Everyone, on occasion, we wanted to be Tyler.
"Only when everything is lost, are we free to act."
-Fight club-