Fight club is a movie made in 1999, starring Brad Pitt and  Edward Norton, directed by David Fincher. When I first heard the title of this movie I thought it would be your basic violent, in your face dramatic movie that every 14 year old boy would find interesting. But, this movie is considered a cult classic, I wanted to see if the movie was worth all the praise.  

The movie follows The Narrator that seems to be a regular boring worker with a bland personality. From early on in the movie you could tell he is unhappy with his life,but tries to fulfill it with things to make him feel whole. They depict this with his most prized possession—his apartment; everything is organized perfectly with each piece of furniture being unique but somehow aesthetically pleasing. 

I found that the beginning of the movie tended to drag on and the plot of the movie was very unclear. The opening scene of the movie is confusing, it shows the main character having a gun to his mouth with another character threatening him. This is especially very confusing for the first 40 minutes of the movie because the theme seems to be the polar opposite of this, with telling us The Narrator (a young man) struggling with insomnia and has tried everything to get rid of it. Later you realize that this is the ending of the movie. 

The plot continues. He goes to different support groups like testicular cancer or different tumors. Even though the narrator doesn’t have any of these life threatening diseases it is what finally helps him sleep at night so he continues to go under different aliases, this is where he meets Helena Bonham Carter’s character Marla Singer. He refers to her as the “imposter” because like him she is a fake. He confronts her and they agree to go on different days. On a business flight from work the narrator meets Brad Pitt’s character Tyler Durdan, a fashionable soap salesman. The two hit it off on the plane but when Tyler returns his apartment has been set on fire, so as a last resort he moves in with Tyler. The two create fight club—a secret club in the basement of a bar. 

After watching the movie the beginning makes so much more sense, but the ending was a bit confusing to me, this may be because the writers left it to interpretation but me personally I like to have a clear ending. I instantly understood why this movie was considered a cult classic. This movie is truly like no other movie I have ever seen. On the surface level it is an action packed movie with good casting and has no predictable outcome. But I liked the deeper meaning that I think most people tend to shy away from—that The main character's mental illness is overlooked by society. I liked how they presented this in the movie. 

When filming the movie Filcher filmed at low angles and close up shots to create distortion to convey how the Narrator was feeling. He also kept the colors of the movie bleak to depict the mental state of the Narrator. 

Another message that this movie portrays is a distorted society, they do this by presenting project mayhem and trying to take down communist culture.  I find the movie closely comparable to American Psycho, with both movies having a distorted society and a male lead who slowly throughout the movie goes crazier. 

What I find most interesting about both movies is the cult following around both, most men have a crazy obsession with one or the other. I find this almost ironic because both films' purposes are to make fun of toxic masculinity. Fight Club portrays this by showing being kind is weak and what being a “real man" is like (the entire premise of club). Tyler also uses Marla throughout the movie. 

I give this movie a 10/10 for it’s uniqueness and messages a lot of movies don’t have anymore.