This week, we at The Red Sparrow, decided to go in mysterious ways to the deepest and the darkest corners of our mind. We ended up with a liking of Psycho Thrillers for Throwback Thursday! The audience wanted us to delve into Fight Club and here we are.
Directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter, this movie is a take on capitalism and it’s twisted ways around us.
It speaks of a nameless young professional (Edward Norton) who works for a major car manufacturer and can’t sleep at all. Although he doesn’t have any need to be present, he stumbles across support groups as a means to let out whatever emotions he is feeling, which in turn allows him to sleep. But the use of these support groups is ruined when he meets a young woman named Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), who is also going to all these support group meetings. Because he knows she too is not afflicted with any of the actual needs for which the groups exist, her presence has lessened the impact of the stories he hears.
His life changes when he meets a soap manufacturer named Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), who in many ways is the antithesis of the insomniac. Due to unusual circumstances with his own apartment, the insomniac moves in with Tyler, who lives in a large house in an otherwise abandoned part of town.
After a bit of spontaneous roughhousing with Tyler in a bar parking lot, the insomniac finds it becomes a ritual between the two of them, which helps him cope with the other more difficult aspects of his life. The fights also attract a following, others who not only want to watch but join in.
Understanding that there are other men like them, the insomniac and Tyler begin a secret fight club. As the fight club’s popularity grows, so does its scope in all aspects.
Marla becomes a circle not specifically of the fight clubs but of Tyler and the insomniac’s collectives lives. As the nature of the fight clubs becomes out of control in the insomniac’s view, the insomniac’s life, in association, is one where he no longer understands what is happening around him, or how he can get out of it without harming himself.
Now somehow, the mixture of capitalism and mental illnesses is present in the life of this nameless man and Tyler too. Somehow, the film goes on the path to the destruction of the city they reside in. Somehow, this is all the doing of the two lead characters, but how?
The film is fantastic in its approach of a psycho thriller. You will never apprehend the forthcoming of the suspense that unravels itself and it will satisfy your confusion throughout the film.
Personally, this is my ultimate psycho thriller to watch, followed by Shutter Island and Gone Girl. Nothing beats the air of thrill this movie brings upon, as well as the cinematography aspect and the stunning performances by each actor.
