Movie

The 1999 film Fight Club, based on Chuck Palahniuk’s novel of the same name, was received as one of the most controversial films of the year, and has since gained a strong cult popularity. The movie places strong emphasis on the evils of modern consumerism, and adopts a “fight the system” attitude throughout. The setting is bleak and degraded – the main character, who remains unnamed for the entirety of the film, inhabits a city that seems perpetually dark and run down. All in all, the film attempts to make a statement on the effects of society norms and “the system” on an individual’s pursuit of happiness; at its center, it employs dissociative identity disorder to do so.
“This is your life and its ending one minute at a time”. The first line of the film not only sets the dark mood for the entire film, it also breaks the fourth wall and establishes a relationship with the audience directly. The narrator is a white-collared employee of a nameless firm, plagued by insomnia and the feeling of being trapped. He medicates himself through consumerism; through the steady acquisition of “things”, he attempts to cure his anxiety and depression. “I flipped through catalogs and wondered: What kind of dining set defines me as a person”, he once asked of himself. However, these things do not help, and his condition worsens until he meets Tyler Durden.
When the narrator’s house burns down mysteriously, he moves in with Tyler Durden, who is portrayed as free-spirited, impulsive and all-in-all a revolutionary. The decide to start “Fight Club”, where men gather each week in a basement to brawl, for no other reason than to sooth the sense of entrapment that they all feel. The more time the narrator spends with Durden, the more he lets go of the material obsession that he clung on to in the past. Finally, one day, Durden leaves with no word or warning.
The narrator travels around the whole country looking for him; he is egged on by mysterious clues, such as plane ticket stubs