What Makes "Fight Club" Great.

The Blu ray disc of the film I own opens with what is a fake menu to a fake romantic comedy film called "Never Been Kissed" then fades out to what you would expect from a Fight Club Blu ray menu, That is awesome.

Fight Club is one of the most fascinating movies i have ever seem. When I first heard about such a film called Fight Club I thought of it as nothing more then senseless violence. But what it is is senseless violence and so much more. It explorers very mature themes of self discovery and offers one of the most interesting look at the nature of humanity that I have ever seen in a film.

Director David Fincher has described the film as a coming of age film for adults and I totally agree. Edward Norton's character goes through an arc of self discovery and learning to find his own person instead of being the mindless drown that the world tells him to be much the 1955 classic "Rebel without a cause". Whether or not it leads him to a better path in life is debatable but the aspects are still there.

The film is also a great study on society. One of the main themes of the film is how commercialism and modern values has turned us into zombies and numbers not names. Edward Norton's character is just credited as "The Narrator" and isn't given a name in the entire film. He guides us through the movie with a great sarcastic wit to his narration. He works a bland desk job that he hates and his apartment is filled of nothing but empty possessions that the media has told him he "needs" to be human. He goes to various support groups of people with cancer even though he doesn't have the disease because it is the one place he can let it all out. As the Narrator says " When people think your dying, they really, really listen to you". Then when we meet Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt in one of his most iconic roles) The narrator sees everything he wishes to be. Tyler may in fact be a cult leading lunatic but he is a person who knows who he is and what he wants unlike everyone else who are told what they should want and say "that'l do just fine". The two create Fight Club as a way to escape the oppression of modern society and return to their natural state of savagery. As Fight Club continue to grows through the country it becomes more about destroying their oppressors, the big corporations that have hypnotized them into becoming people that they don't really want to be. But Tyler's methods of doing this are no better then the corporations that he is trying to destroy. He to manipulates his followers with false promises of liberation much like how advertisers manipulate us. He's followers are nothing more then robots designed to obey his every command like how they possibly were before with buying things because the the world told them do. At the end of the film we learn that Tyler and The Narrator are the same person and as The narrator learns that he must not only liberate himself from the the world, he must also liberate from himself. So while the end shows Tyler's plan of destruction become a reality, the film ends on a seamlessly positive note as The narrator is freed from the two prisons that held him back from being his own person and for the first time seems to be optimistic about the future.

The performances by Norton and Pitt are an absolute joy to watch, especially the scenes where there just small talking like when they meet first the first time on a flight in which Tyler tells The Narrator that oxygen masks are used to get you high, or when they are at the restaurant after The Narrator's apartment blows up in which The Narrator discusses all the things he has now lost. The film also has some great dark humor which is utilized best through Edward Norton's sarcastic wit to his narration.

Fight Club is violent, darkly funny, and a hell of a ride from start to finish> I look forward to the day where I visit it again.