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Fight Club and its critique of consumerist psychosis
Fight Club in addition to having marked its time, this film by David Fincher manages to remain current to this day.
Despite not having been commercially successful in the year of its release, the film marked an epoch and its cultural influence is notable and visible to this day. But what was the main reason Fight Club became a true cult movie? Are your criticisms still valid? These are the topics that we will cover in this post.
Before we continue, a warning: this text will break the first two rules of fight club and here we are going to talk about the movie and the book Fight Club, in addition to its two sequels in comics, Fight Club 2 and Fight Club 3.
An incendiary and revolutionary film
Let's start with the movie itself. The screenplay by Jim Uhls was inspired by the book of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk, released a few years earlier, in 1996, but the author himself liked the cinematographic result so much, that he says he prefers the film to the book Fight Club. The reason is that the ending of the novel is quite different from the conclusion of the film, much less ambitious and explosive.
It is necessary to recognize Fight Club. David Fincher's film manages the feat of staying current even two decades after its release, and most of its scathing reviews are still very pertinent, some even more so than they were at the time.
Many of Fight Club's targets are present in society to this day, some stronger than ever, such as consumerism, encouraged by the advertising industry, which has its own culture. The film strongly emphasizes that the viewer needs to stop being simply a consumer, manipulated by advertising agencies and their clients, who decide what they should like and, therefore, consume.
I write these words on a technology blog, and we are well aware that nowadays an annual smartphone update cycle has been created and, although tablets and computers last much longer than that, we are increasingly seeing a planned obsolescence that would surely drive Tyler Durden even more seriously. Not everyone changes their cell phone every year, but I guarantee that most people feel like doing so.
Credits Image: Imdb.com
Let's talk a little about the plot. At the beginning of the film, the narrator is still trying to find himself, when he meets Marla Singer (played by actress Helena Bonham Carter) on their visits to support groups for illnesses that neither of them have.
His life begins to change, but it definitely changes the moment he meets Tyler Durden (the always excellent Brad Pitt in one of the best performances of his life) on a flight, and after his apartment blows up, he has to move in with him.
The two begin a symbiotic relationship that transforms the narrator's life, and organize a fight club, at first innocent, just an environment in which men can vent their anger and let out their demons in a healthy way, but that's the tube. rehearsal for something far more sinister, a nihilistic terrorist organization, Project Destruction, or Project Mayhem.
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In a very short time, fight clubs spread across the country, and quickly become this organization, which is led by Tyler Durden, who the narrator discovers in a beautiful plot twist, which is none other than another identity of his own.
In this way, in addition to the criticism of consumerism, the film also talks about the mental illness of its protagonist, who suffers from a dissociative identity disorder that leads him to create a new personality to do what he unconsciously believes needs to be done. The narrator projects on Tyler everything he would like to be, and actually is, but initially has no idea.
Until the final confrontation, the film also shows a curious love triangle formed between the narrator, Tyler (that is, the same person) and Marla. The purpose of Project Destruction is to form an army to destroy modern civilization.
The organization manages to achieve its goals, by blowing up the buildings at the end of the film, following Tyler Durden's plans. Some even accused the film of having served as the inspiration for the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Fight Club cost $63 million and made just under $101 million at the box office, but only $37 million in the US market, which was well below 20th Century Fox's expectations. In any case, if it was not financially successful, it certainly marked its generation.
In addition to the excellent performances of Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, who shine in the main roles, the supporting cast of the film is also great, and includes actors such as Meat Loaf, Jared Leto and Rachel Singer.
Inexplicably, Fight Club was not nominated for an Oscar, except in a technical category, that of best sound effects. This is an immense injustice by the Academy with the script, direction and performances of this film, not to mention the editing, all of which are simply sensational.
After many years of believing he had ended the story for good, Palahniuk changed his mind, and wrote a sequel to Fight Club, Fight Club 2, a story illustrated by Cameron Stewart, with covers designed by David Mack.
Fight Club 2 takes place ten years after the original story, and tells the story of how Sebastian (Tyler Durden's alter-ego, who is not named in the film) ends up falling into a rut in his relationship with Marla and their son. 9-year-old Junior, who seems to have learned a few tricks from Tyler.
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Everything seems to be normal, but boredom (and longing for Tyler) starts to take over Marla, and eventually Tyler's personality will have to reawaken. The sequel is focused on Project Mayhem, and also on the idea that Tyler Durden is something that has been around for centuries, and not an aberration that popped into the narrator's head.
Chuck Palahniuk continues writing the history of Fight Club, with yet another release, Fight Club 3, in which Marla and Sebastian (now called Balthazar) have another child, or rather, she and Tyler, as he is the one who is interested in a new one. heir that you can mold according to your thinking.
How is the author today?
In an interview shortly before the film's release, author Chuck Palahniuk tells how he was already getting free meals in restaurants and cafeterias, because of a scene in the book in which Tyler Durden doesn't have to pay for what he consumed. The author also tells how some details about the story came from his own life, specifically from six of his friends, as well as talking about what his literary influences were.
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These days, things are not easy for Palahniuk. Although the author has recently released another book, Adjustment Day, he is not able to reap the rewards of his labor as he is facing a lot of financial difficulties after one of his accountants was arrested and accused of stealing all the royalties and trading money. of film rights from the literary agency where he worked. The fact that the author gets free lunches and dinners can be helpful now that he is experiencing these difficulties.
You're not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank, you're not the car you drive, you're not what's in your wallet, you're not your fucking khakis, you're all singing, all dancing shit of this world.
The things you own end up owning you.
I see all that potential, and I see it wasted. An entire generation fueling cars, waiting tables – slaves with white collars. Advertising makes us chase cars and clothes, jobs we hate to buy shit we don't need. We're the middle child in the story, man. No purpose or place. We don't have a Great War. We don't have a Great Depression. Our great war is spiritual... Our great depression is our life. We were raised by television to believe that one day we would all be millionaires, or movie gods, or rock stars, but we won't. We are slowly learning this fact. And we're really, really pissed off.
Only when we have lost everything are we free to do anything.
Listen up, worms! You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake! You are made of the same decaying material as everything else! We are the dancing, singing shit of the universe! We are all part of the same compost pile.
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The first rule of Project Destruction is: you don't ask questions.