"The first rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club"
Based on the Book of the same name, an iconic movie from 1999 but not without its controversy. It is a movie by David Fincher, one of the best directors of the past 25 years and Fight Club is probably the most divisive.
Narratively it captures toxic masculinity, angry young men of non conformity in a deeply unsettling way especially looking at it with a 2022 viewpoint.
The argument whether the movie is just holding a mirror up to society, if it is a satire taking an absurdist viewpoint or if it is a ugly celebration of alienation and aggression depends if you take things literally or if you can separate life and art. It's not the first complicated movie to contain ambiguous characters and messages and it won't be the last ( Taxi driver to Joker).
A depressed man (Edward Norton) suffering from insomnia meets a strange soap salesman named Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and soon finds himself living in his squalid house after his perfect apartment is destroyed. The two bored men form an underground club with strict rules and fight other men who are fed up with their mundane lives.
This is available as a T shirt in an almost ironic tribute as the one of the biggest messages in the movie is how anti-capitalist it is, with the need to fill empty lives with Ikea and Starbucks and the act of buying stuff. Fast forward to today now with the rise of the mega corporations such as Amazon, the effect of social media and the manipulation of information this resonates more now than ever.
Brad Pitt turns in a wonderful performance and cements his place as more than a Hollywood pretty boy, Norton is perfect as the sarcastic dark humored narrator. The twist at the end is mind blowing Fight Club is an exhausting, mayhem filled, subversive and technically brilliant experience.
Now streaming on Netflix, Disney + and Amazon Prime
Our tee is a tribute to the cult classic movie released in 1999, grab yours here
Featured image: 20th Century Fox