FauxNixon

Fight Club is a cult-favorite both in its cinematic adaption and in its novel form as written by Chuck Palahniuk.  The film adaption employs Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Meat Loaf, and Helena Bonham Carter to bring Palahniuk’s novel to life.  Brad Pitt is reported to have exclaimed to Palahniuk on the set, “Thank you for the best part of my life!”

The story revolves around an unnamed narrator who has become bored with his middle-class lifestyle in which he is employed by an automobile manufacturer to investigate accidents to determine whether it will cost the manufacturer more to settle claims on automotive defects or initiate a recall of all of the products. He is an insomniac who craves Ikea products and other catalog-order items to decorate his condo and spends his time cleaning and traveling.  When he meets Tyler Durden (Pitt) he finds new methods of dealing with, and living, life.  The two set off on an adventure to masculinize their lives as a reaction against the feminization of men in America and try to remake society in a manner they believe will free the masses to better, more natural lives.

The visual effects are astoundingly well-done.  The very introduction to the film is a shot zooming out from a single firing neuron in the brain through the brain’s fear centers, through the skull and tissue, onto the skin, and then up the barrel of what is ultimately see to be a gun held in the narrator’s mouth.  Other instances of this fluid camera tracking take place throughout the film and another instance, roughly a third of the way through the movie is a camera tracking out of an office trashcan filled with consumer garbage with items appearing similar to planets and galaxies in space travel.

This film is easy to recommend for viewing.  Though it has an abnormally strong cult following, for some reason it remains unknown to large segments of the movie-going public.