Fight Club
directed by David Fincher, originating book by Chuck Palahniuk
Fight Club is a 1999 movie by director David Fincher, based on the 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. With enough books left unread in my closet, I ofcourse went for the movie. In the original trailer the movie seemed nothing more than a simple hard action movie for the boys which is why I wasn't quite interested. Apparently I wasn't the only one with this opinion as Fight Club turned out to be a flop at the box office. Lucky for us the DVD release made it into the success it is now.
If you are anything like me and haven't seen this movie yet, I would just suggest you to rent it right now before you read any further or see footage from the movie. There are no huge spoilers ahead, but the Youtube movie below does include some footage that is critical in the plot.
Fight Club tells the story of an unnamed character -also the narrator in the story- (played by Edward Norton) who is an automobile company employee suffering from insomnia. Desperate in finding a solution for his sleeping disorder he resorts to a few interesting possible options. But it is only when he meets Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) that the narrator discovers that he was looking for the wrong things, things in which he would never find peace of mind -or a good night's sleep for that matter.
So what does a movie where the title insinuates a lot of violent action have to do with buddhism ? Quite a lot as it turns out to be. In the above Youtube video the user sasquatchwookieboner (I just had to quote such a username), explores the connection I had seen between Fight Club and buddhism/zen pretty extensively.
Fight Club then is nothing more than a dark, slightly exaggerated representation of today's society. What it does extremely well is pinpoint the other side of our Western consumerist society and the alienation (Karl Marx) from people with their human nature. The movie is great at provoking questions at our current model of society and even more importantly at the way we each want to live our lives. I loved it, every teenager will love it and everybody who will want to look a little bit deeper into the movie will love it as well.