Have you seen Fight Club yet? Most everyone has, but a few viewers have actually somehow managed to miss this movie. Of course, it wasn't just a movie, it was also something of a cultural event. Love it or hate it, you have to respect that it was one of the most influential films of the last twenty years, at least deserving as much respect as Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction or Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. It was the movie that ended the nineties as those two movies began the era, and certainly one of the must download movies of the decade.
The story follows an unnamed narrator portrayed by Ed Norton. There's a lot of "Office Space" type humor as he disparages his corporate white collar job, but there's an ugliness to it here, a darkness not present in Office Space. The movie is very deep and brooding and twisted, while at the same time sarcastic and nonchalant about the whole thing.
The narrator meets Tyler Durden, and the rest is history. Durden is a character who is completely free of the boundaries of society placed on most people. You know Kramer, from Seinfeld? He's kind of like that. Just, imagine how dangerous, frightening, and at the same time, inspiring, Kramer would be if you took him out of the sitcom setting and put him into a world where his actions could result in serious consequences.
Tyler is really the heart of the film, forming the Fight Club alongside the narrator. The Fight Club begins innocently enough as a bare knuckle get together where white collar guys get together and beat each other up for the fun of it and to reaffirm their manhood in a society that has sissified them and turned them into cowardly cubicle slaves rather than raw, testosterone driven animals.
Once they start robbing banks and trying to take over the world, you see that the Fight Club is an expression of rage, that impotent rage that all men feel in a society that has castrated them in a symbolic way. The movie is outlandish and surreal, but this part isn't. That anger is very real, and it seems entirely realistic that, given the right catalyst, men really could just go crazy and start blowing things up for no good reason (heck some guys already do it).
The finale, the way the movie ties everything together, it's very interesting. It's kind of frightening, it's exciting, and it's kind of funny. In the end, all of the details about Durden and the Narrator are, if not quite solved, at least developed into something you'll enjoy thinking about.
In the years since Fight Club, Ed Norton has become... Well he can be predictable. You always know exactly how he's going to act from minute to minute. Interestingly, it's Brad Pitt here who gives one of the best performances, and who would then go on to top it, over and over again, throughout the next several movies of his career. He tops this role in the Coen Brother's Burn After Reading, and again in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. However, this role, and 12 Monkeys, were probably the two that really showed that he was a real actor, and not just a pretty boy.
Love it or hate it, this movie, as shocking, grotesque and violent as it may be, is one of the most influential of the last twenty years, and at the very least, deserves its due respect.
The story follows an unnamed narrator portrayed by Ed Norton. There's a lot of "Office Space" type humor as he disparages his corporate white collar job, but there's an ugliness to it here, a darkness not present in Office Space. The movie is very deep and brooding and twisted, while at the same time sarcastic and nonchalant about the whole thing.
The narrator meets Tyler Durden, and the rest is history. Durden is a character who is completely free of the boundaries of society placed on most people. You know Kramer, from Seinfeld? He's kind of like that. Just, imagine how dangerous, frightening, and at the same time, inspiring, Kramer would be if you took him out of the sitcom setting and put him into a world where his actions could result in serious consequences.
Tyler is really the heart of the film, forming the Fight Club alongside the narrator. The Fight Club begins innocently enough as a bare knuckle get together where white collar guys get together and beat each other up for the fun of it and to reaffirm their manhood in a society that has sissified them and turned them into cowardly cubicle slaves rather than raw, testosterone driven animals.
Once they start robbing banks and trying to take over the world, you see that the Fight Club is an expression of rage, that impotent rage that all men feel in a society that has castrated them in a symbolic way. The movie is outlandish and surreal, but this part isn't. That anger is very real, and it seems entirely realistic that, given the right catalyst, men really could just go crazy and start blowing things up for no good reason (heck some guys already do it).
The finale, the way the movie ties everything together, it's very interesting. It's kind of frightening, it's exciting, and it's kind of funny. In the end, all of the details about Durden and the Narrator are, if not quite solved, at least developed into something you'll enjoy thinking about.
In the years since Fight Club, Ed Norton has become... Well he can be predictable. You always know exactly how he's going to act from minute to minute. Interestingly, it's Brad Pitt here who gives one of the best performances, and who would then go on to top it, over and over again, throughout the next several movies of his career. He tops this role in the Coen Brother's Burn After Reading, and again in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. However, this role, and 12 Monkeys, were probably the two that really showed that he was a real actor, and not just a pretty boy.
Love it or hate it, this movie, as shocking, grotesque and violent as it may be, is one of the most influential of the last twenty years, and at the very least, deserves its due respect.
About the Author:
You can download horror movies and burn them to a DVD to watch whenever you'd like. Downloads Movies Online Canadian citizens are safe from movie downloading causing copyright violations. If you wish to connect your computer to your TV to watch a movie that you have downloaded, you need the proper cables to do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment