Fight Club spoilers here!
Gaith said:
Roger Ebert:"...a feisty chain-smoking hellcat [character Marla Singer] who is probably so angry because none of the guys thinks having sex with her is as much fun as a broken nose...."
Wait a sec - when did Marla ever see "the guys"? All she ever saw was Edward Norton's 'Narrator' character. Tyler Durden does not exist, and she only saw anyone from Project Mayhem when she stopped into the house one time, and later when they retrieve her from the Greyhound bus and bring her to the Narrator in the empty skyscraper. She's angry (more miserable, was my understanding) because she hasn't led a life worth living. And she's lonely. She acts-out for attention.
Gaith said:
Nathan Rabin,
AV Club: "Everything about it conveys a smug, adolescent nihilism that's as emotionally powerful as it is shallow, and while it may be interpreted as an anti-fascist/anti-cult parable, it also draws most of its power from the same conformist, hyper-masculine ideology."
Who interprets this as an anti-fascist parable or a warning against cults? Is that a common take on the movie? I thought it was much more about being comfortable with who you are, living a life you will feel satisfied with, taking chances toward your goals, abandoning the notions of consumer society, rejecting advertising's mission, resisting corporate monopoly of culture, and accepting death as inevitable & not to be feared. Nihilism? It's hardly nihilistic. The narrator's alter-ego tells him to re-make himself, and he does, and the alter-ego very nearly comes to takeover the actual person. This movie is about sanity, and losing it, but also (or in doing so) giving-up on the superfluous things that we allow or even choose to be bound with.
Gaith said:
Why does the unnamed protagonist ...not forget all about Tyler Durden and lose himself in the delights of such a lithe and pliant barbie doll of a Hollywood Love Interst? The movie doesn't bother to offer an explanation, which can only be interpreted to mean: "because the plot requires him not to."
Norton's character had no girlfriend, no pornos, no calendar pin-up girl, no calling a phone-sex 900-number - could it be that he just isn't a highly sexual person, or that he's so buried in working, and striving to attain that one more bit of completion (the
new shelf, the latest hi-tech saltshaker, the coolest dining table) toward perfection that he just doesn't really
live, I mean
really live, or even interact with anyone? Who are his friends? A single one is not shown. And he is constantly traveling, fails to get adequate sleep, frequently deals with death and injury found suddenly as the result of corporate greed and disregard - might these factor explain the psychotic break he undergoes, resulting in the formation of a drastically different personality he elects to 'follow' and have lead him?
It's not that the plot requires Norton to stay unaware of his delusion about Pitt, it's that the audience does; if I wanted to see a movie about a character having a mental problem and getting treatment and recovering in the typical, common ways, I'd TiVo the Lifetime Network for a couple days. There are movies about mental disorders and their treatments; to me, this is another, but the story Palahniuk gave us has the character go untreated and venture so far from his day-to-day world with his schizoid personality, that is why I like this film.
Gaith said:
I gave up a bit more than part-way through
Oh, well that explains a lot. If you're not bothered by the spoilers above, maybe you should watch the whole thing. You'd have a better ground for your critique, if you still hold that position by the end.