One film that always seems to enter my thoughts is the Brad Pitt Edward Norton movie Fight Club. The film itself was made in 1999 and when I first heard of this film I was put off by the name, however the film itself is a very philosophical film in my opinion. I’ve had thoughts about this film repeatedly influencing my actions at very strange times in my life. I’ve heard people say the message is anti consumerism or a film about masculinity. But really the more I think about it the message is much deeper. 

The film starts with Edward Norton attending all these social groups for people with some sort of illness: testicular cancer group, insomnia, emotional distress etc. However he is in fact a bit of a tourist. He doesn’t have the problems the people in the group have.  He is just very lonely Around this time he meets Helen Bonham Carter who is also a tourist. He initially gets annoyed that she is there and asks that they split up the groups so they don’t see each other. One day, on a flight to an unnamed city in the USA, Norton meets Brad Pitt on a plane. Who is later revealed to be some sort of alternate version of himself. Next Norton’s apartment goes on fire, he loses all his consumer goods that he has accumulated via his white collar office job. 

Brad Pitt increasingly encourages Norton to act on his more basic urges (this sounds a bit suspect but I can’t think of how else to write it). They rob a convenience store with an unloaded gun but take nothing, they start a bare knuckle boxing fight club of all male members, Brad Pitt lets the owner of the premises beat him very badly, they let go of the steering wheel while driving a car (and it crashes). Eventually the pair of them found a sort of cult of all young men (again, I can’t think of how else to phrase it) in an old abandoned house. The members carry out pranks on the city for attention and for their strange philosophy.

Like the last film I blogged about, The Brutalist, I am reluctant to define what is actually a very abstract film. But again I will try. A lot of people will look at the film and say Brad Pitt is a sort of alpha male and he teaches Norton to act like a true man or some rubbish like that. In my opinion, Brad Pitt is really sort of socially progressive and Norton the conservative. They are the two parts of the human mind. Initially Norton doesn’t trust Pitt but as the film goes on he builds trust in Pitt. It’s hard to trust people to bring about change. We all feel threatened by change, infamous people such as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin tried to change the world and brought about tragedy. Stories like this weigh heavily on the Western mind. Democracy itself is a several hundred year old idea. I call Pitt’s organisation a cult but how is a cult really any different to any social organisation or any religious organisation? A cult just has negative connotations. The word itself is a compliment to conservatism. Of course at a basic level, Fight Club is a violent and male dominated film. But Fight Club was made at a different time and tried to provoke thought at that time and bring about change in its own way. 1999 was a time when feminism and progressiveness was less developed.

The film ends with Pitt’s cult organising the demolition (via explosives) of all the credit companies in the city, allegedly resulting in total anarchy. In the end credits, play the song ‘Where is My Mind’ by The Pixies. The song is one of my all time favorite songs and I love all the various covers.

I feel like I have a lot more to say about this film, but I have to go at the time of writing.