That’s interesting Otto, and it’s something I noticed as well. Actually IIRC there are several parts that could serve as potential holes.
[spoiler]Who knows, perhaps the people watching him beat the tar out of himself were curious as to what he was doing. He explains it to them and they want in on it. Or perhaps he was just envisioning himself fighting Tyler, when in reality he was fighting someone else.
I agree that this is a major hole and I’m only speculating as to ways to ad-hoc a filler. I read the book, but I don’t recall the scene in question. In fact I don’t remember much about the book-truth be told-it’s been a few years…[/spoiler]
We all need to buy things. The problem is that there is a certain joy and satisfaction derived from creating something with your own two hands. In order to produce the things we need and use, our jobs have become increasingly automated and compartmentalized. We are removed from the creation process and simply become cogs in a large machine. Lacking that joy of creation, we attempt to fill that void by consuming, which ultimately leaves us feeling unfullfilled.
Doesn’t matter. Everything in the movie is a retelling from Norton’s character, and subject to perspective. Possibly my favorite touch is that in the beginning, we meet Norton in the top of the abandoned building, gun in his mouth. He say, “I can’t think of anything to say.” Later in the movie, we come back to that scene. Durden shoves the gun in Norton’s mouth and he say, “I still can’t think of anything to say.” Brilliant!
I’m with Meatros on this one. My big “eureka!” moment was in the scene where the narrator returns to his apartment to find all the emergency vehicles around the building. Take a look at the table out on the grass, and consider carefully the following:
What does the table symbolize?
What does it say about its owner?
What does it say about the person who put it outside?
For those of you who have seen it and don’t know what I mean:
[spoiler]1) It’s a yin-yang table, which symbolizes the balancing of opposing natures.
It was Ikea consumer crap (which is bad) and symbolizes the narrator’s attempts to purchase a balanced life, however it also symbolizes balance (which is good).
Tyler put the table outside, but he did it by caving into his destructive side, and thereby destroyed “the balance.”
Robert Paulsen is a foreshadowing of what could happen to the narrator: Bob goes from being a feminized man (“Bob had bitch tits”) to feeling purely masculine and alive… but the excesses of Project Mayhem kill him.
[/spoiler]
I would agree, and I would add that this distance we now experience between creating and consuming has caused a collective feeling of alienation. This alienation has had a stagnating effect on our ability to feel. We don’t really live life anymore, not the way we used to, and feelings don’t have the same purpose. How useful is being sad or angry, if you’re only sad and angry at what you don’t need, only want? That used to be a response to real, physical suffering. I think Fight Club presented these men with that opportunity of being in the moment and having to rely on their wits and their instincts, to really feel their existance, instead of being in their heads so much. That’s also why the Narrator attends self-help groups randomly–vicarious suffering makes him feel.
That whole “you are not a unique snowflake” thing then becomes a mirror of the embracing of our sameness that is the subtext of the realization that we are, whether we like it or not, animals. It is through our struggles that we become self-aware and aware of others, that we can truly appreciate life. That’s why Kessler’s breakfast will “taste better” than any breakfast the Narrator and Durden have ever had. He fulfilled his prime directive: he survived.
Other themes include criticim of:
-religion (God hates us)
-paternal failure (related to the above)
-capitalism (they are, after all, trying to reduce the debt to zero, and the Narrators job)
-death (on a long enough timeline, everyone’s survivability rate drops to zero)
Also, as a side note and total hijack: for any of you who attend The Rocky Horror Picture Show regularly, you can usually get a great reaction with a “His name was Robert Paulsen” callback right after the close-up on the floor of the freezer. The fan bases of the two movies cross over quite a bit, and I was lucky enough to get several other fans chanting along with me for two or three repetitions. The cast wasn’t expecting it, and one of them completely cracked up.
Norton was also suffering from the stress of corporate immorality. He was required to do an immoral job. He was enabling the deaths of hundreds of people. And he was seeing the results first hand. I’ve always assumed that was the thing that was sucking the life out of him and making it impossible for him to sleep. The guilt from doing that job would have made me self-destructive and sleepless, too, and I’m not a guy.
That was explained at the very beginning of the movie, so if you missed that, you missed the cruz of the film’s emotional setting. You have to be able to connect the violence of the rest of the movie to the violence of that job.
In other words, rent the movie and watch it from the beginning, like everyone has said. I also avoided the movie because it’s advertizing made it look like a mindless testosterone flick. I’m glad I finally got stuck watching it. Trust me, you’ll watch it twice.
I wonder if the OP saw the same part from the middle of the film that I’ve never seen, because I found it so uninteresting that I wandered out of the room for about 45 minutes to check the 'Dope.
Since so many people seem to like it, I can only imagine that Fight Club is more enjoyable if the “twist” hasn’t been spoiled for you ahead of time. Shortly after the movie’s theatrical release, I just happened to overhear some people blabbing about the ending. I hadn’t even known it was supposed to have a surprise ending! “Guess I don’t need to see that one now,” I thought, and I was right. I didn’t need to see it. It’s not so much that the surprise was ruined for me (although that was annoying in and of itself), but this particular type of “twist” is one that I have always hated. I found that I don’t hate it any less when I know it’s coming.
That said, I thought Fight Club was very well edited. And I mean that as a sincere compliment, not in a “Well, he’s very punctual, and has clean fingernails” sort of way.
And they come up with this crap. I also didn’t understand why Pitt liked getting kicked around by that big mafia-looking creep (Tony).
Yeah, i’m an alienated young man…but I don’t like getting the crap beaten out of me.
This is a sign that you’re not batshit nuts. Also, I don’t think he liked the beating so much as he liked being able to withstand the beating. As a result of that beating, he won the fight. They decided he was too scary batshit nuts to argue with.
[spoiler]That was never a big hole for me. I just assumed that “Jack” gave basically the same speach to the guys that Tyler gave “Jack”. Something like:
<Guys walk up> "Hey, what the hell are you doing?
<Narrator> “Oh hey, do me a favor. I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”
<Guys> “What the fuck are you talking about?”
<Narrator> “I’ve never been in a fight, so how can I know myself?”
etc…[/spoiler]
So can I assume you’ve gone out and rented the movie and watched it all now? Or are you basing this opinon on the middle chunk, edited for TV? Because, as numerous people have said ** there’s a bit more to it than that.**
Surprisingly not. And that fact apparently inspired the book.
I’ve been watching the commentaries and bonus features from the DVD like a mental patient for the last month. I’ve watched most of the commentaries multiple times; the one with Fincher, Pitt, Norton, and Carter is possibly my favorite commentary track of all time.
Anyway, there is also a commentary track with the author and screenwriter. The author (I should remember his name, but I don’t) described his inspiration for the book: (paraphrased)
"I was on a weekend camping trip, and these annoying people decided to camp right next to us and blast their music. Eventually, I got pissed enough to confront them, and we got in a huge fight. I was beaten brutally, and looked like death warmed over. My face was hamburger. What I found so interesting about it was when I went back to work on Monday.
Nobody said anything about my destroyed face. They wouldn’t even look at it. It took months for it to fully heal, but nbody ever said a word. It was simply too in-your-face for people to deal with, violence on such a visceral level."
It’s been running on FX in heavy rotation lately, and I caught a snippet of the middle the other day. They show an amazing amount you wouldn’t expect. For instance, they included the complete line “I haven’t been <silenced> like that since gradeschool”, and Helena’s mouth so clearly forms the word “fucked” that you almost feel like you heard her say it.
The rubber gloves are still in. They did nix the condoms in the toilet, but all the screaming is the same. They pan & scanned the dildo out, but left in the line about it not being a threat.
That’s the extent of the part I saw. At that point, I popped the DVD back in and continued with the final commentary track.
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of content that survived the cable cuts.
Was I the only one who saw this movie as a parable on the rise of fascism? It seems as though they were trying to say that America of 1999 is disturbingly similar to Europe of the 1920’s and 30’s.
Bored, aimless males with a diminished hold on their own masculinity + crumbling, materialistic society + intensly charismatic, insane leader who gives them a purpose in life = fascism. The Space Monkeys were a variation on Brownshirts, and the Fight Club itself was reminiscent of the martial spirit of the Nazi youth movements, with their tests of strength and love of pageantry.