Fight Club: Movie Analysis

Introduction

Fight Club tells the story of an everyday man who wanders from the safety of his nine-to-five life into a no-man's-land of violence and social destruction. The protagonist, played by Edward Norton, is a white-collared American nobody who joins an underground boxing society and engages in bare fisted fighting in an attempt to recover his sense of manhood.

There are many ways to declare one thing better than another. Fight Club comes out as the overall winner in many categories that we use to define greatness. My intent was to prove this through a multitude of arguments, primarily through the themes, issues, stimulation, and quality of acting in both movies.

Analysis

The lead actor is the ever-popular Brad Pitt, who makes his strongest bid to date to shed his pretty boy image and don the mantle of a serious thespian. Those dubious about Pitt's ability to pull this off in the wake of his attempts in movies such as Seven Years In Tibet and Meet Joe Black will suffer a change of heart after seeing this film. Pitt's male co-star and the protagonist, Ed Norton, is widely recognized as one of the most intelligent and versatile performers of his generation.

In Fight Club, the common man is used as the main character. One way he is shown to be Joe Everyman, so to speak, is through his anonymity. The fact that he is kept anonymous (named only Narrator) proves the point of the story that this could be any one of us; that a rebellion against Corporate America can be started by an average person. Norton shows great versatility in his acting as well.

The film begins by introducing us to our narrator and the protagonist, Jack, who is brilliantly portrayed by Norton. In Fight Club, the actor fits perfectly into the part of a cynical but mild-mannered employee of a major automobile manufacturer who is suffering from a bout of insomnia. When he visits his doctor for a remedy, the disinterested physician tells him to stop whining and visit a support group for testicular cancer survivors if he wants to meet people who really have problems. So Jack does exactly that - and discovers that interacting with these victims gives him an emotional release that allows him to sleep. Soon, he is addicted to attending support group meetings, and has one lined up for each night of the week. That's where he meets Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), another "faker." Unlike Jack, however, she attends purely for the voyeuristic entertainment value.

On what can be described as the worst day of his life (an airline loses his luggage and his apartment unit explodes, destroying all of his possessions), Jack meets the flamboyant Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a soap salesman with an unconventional view of life. Since Jack is in need of a place to live, Tyler invites him to move in, and the two share a "dilapidated house in a toxic waste part of town." Tyler teaches Jack lessons about freedom ...