Fight Club

Fight Club is definitely one of my top ten movies, but I never normally sit down and watch movies I've already seen. I happened to catch Fight Club the other day, and I forgot how intense and intelligent some of the quotations are.

I think I like Fight Club so much is because you pick up new things every time you watch it. It's a movie that makes you think, forces you to think. The other day when I watched it, I even picked up new ideas, motives, etc. and I've seen the movie so many times since it debuted in 1999. The movie is such an amazing idea anyway, showing the dual selves like that, and the control and manipulation that follows. I am also a big fan of the premise behind Fight Club--not to be the average Joe and break from the system. They may take it pretty extreme (more extreme than I am ever willing to go), with Project Mayhem, but their extremism is perhaps a hyperbole to get dramatic effect to let the purpose be made completely clear.

Movies that deal with the inner human psyche are so interesting to me because we can learn so much about people from hearing these first-hand accounts. Even though they are fictional, they are still a semi-accurate depiction of the inner mind (especially minds facing disorders such as Edward Norton's character's).



Anyway, I want to paste some good lines here.

Only after disaster can we be resurrected.

This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time.

Narrator: This is crazy...
Tyler Durden: People do it everyday, they talk to themselves... they see themselves as they'd like to be, they don't have the courage you have, to just run with it.

It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.

I felt like destroying something beautiful.

Narrator: When people think you're dying, they really, really listen to you, instead of just...
Marla Singer: - instead of just waiting for their turn to speak?

The things you own end up owning you.

If you wake up at a different time in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?

Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space.

And then, something happened. I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.

Hitting bottom isn't a weekend retreat. It's not a goddamn seminar. Stop trying to control everything and just let go! LET GO!

Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.

When the fight was over, nothing was solved, but nothing mattered. We all felt saved.

And, the purpose:

Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.



Did you like this movie? Why/why not? What was your favorite line, idea, or plot detail?