The twentieth century was a century of change, a century marked by early wars and a frantic technological advance at the end; breakthrough that gave rise to the consumer society we know today. The Club da Luta (David Fincher, 1999) ended this century and marked the beginning of the 21st century in a wild, brutal and desperate way. Every sentence, every scene, every shot?everything, absolutely everything it presents generates a reaction in the viewer.
Clube da Luta takes a harsh critique of society, a blow to many of us who sometimes feel identified with the anonymous character beautifully embodied by Edward Norton. Many criticized the film, many felt uncomfortable and others saw it as a masterpiece that was the perfect finishing touch by the end of the 20th century.
- No.
- It’s not a film to watch quietly eating popcorn.
- Or a film that awakens the most forced sentimentality in cinema; it is a film that awakens.
- In the strict sense of the word.
- The viewer.
- In the credits.
- We are warned that we will witness a real stab in our ego.
- In our stomachs.
The main character, whose name is not mentioned, is a faithful reflection of a man victim of the time when he lives: slave to his work, suffers from insomnia and wastes his time buying items at IKEA. Their only encouragement is through group therapies in which people with diseases like cancer come together to make their situation more bearable.
All of this changes when he meets Marla, the film’s key character and later Tyler Durden (or himself). Due to the complexity of the film, it is not advisable to continue reading if you have not seen it, since the article contains spoilers. .
Grey, dark, uncomfortable and nauseating, Clube da Luta is a true sadistic laugh of everything around us, of the world as we know it, of the consumer society of which we are slaves.
David Fincher and his unforgettable trio of actors (Helena Bonham Carter, Edward Norton and Brad Pitt) manage to capture the essence of the late 1990s, anticipating what was to come, immersing themselves in a dark club, full of blood and self-destruction.
“We live in a sick world and we are sick”; so we can summarize the feeling it leaves. The film is presented as an introspective narrative narrated by its protagonist, but this introspection, in turn, has a certain universality.
Although narrated in the first person, the protagonist does not say his name and presents himself as one of the most common men: he lives alone in an apartment in a large city, works for a large automotive company as an expert, suffers from insomnia and spends his money buying.
This characterization is quite universal. Because we don’t know your name, we transfer your ‘I’ account through ours, we do a retrospective of our own life. The protagonist lives in a world we know, there is no fantasy or artifice, it is our own daily reality. Their? Evils are our ailments or those of many people we know.
His main problem is insomnia, his doctor refuses to continue prescribing sleeping pills and chooses to use group therapies for people with cancer.
There she meets Bob, a man who after suffering from prostate cancer lost her manhood, had her testicles amputated and, due to treatment, developed her breasts, the protagonist is relieved with these people and eventually manages to fall asleep.
He doesn’t even know the reason for his insomnia, he doesn’t know the root of the problem. In fact, all you know is that in these therapies you find a space of peace, a place to cry, something that until recently seemed forbidden to men because crying was synonymous with femininity.
We live in a busy world, consume to feel good, have it all and yet, every day it is more common to hear words like anxiety, stress, insomnia, depression?The diseases of our time are also, and so are our protagonists. .
Just when it seems that the situation is under control and that it handles its problem, appears Marla, the woman who will cause the disintegration of peace, destabilize it and suffer from insomnia again. Marla is like him, a woman for whom life has no means waiting for death and her greatest pain not to come. She also uses these therapies, she’s another visitor.
Why is Marla a threat? Because Marla is the living image of herself, it is the image of her lie and, if discovered, her whole center of stability and peace will disappear. Marla’s rejection is a rejection of himself; Marla even uses prostate cancer treatment, but who will believe a woman has had prostate cancer?
This carelessness, this idea of taking advantage of other people’s pain to make their needs is what drives the protagonist crazy, simply because Marla is the female version of herself.
After Marla appears Tyler Durden, an attractive and strong man who lives outside the rules and the system; he makes soap, lives in a house that could be described as ruin and always does what he wants.
Tyler is the antithesis of our time, it is the absolute rejection of capitalism, the modern man who lives a slave to his work so that he can buy material things that supposedly fill his inner void.
Together they created the Fight Club, the protagonist’s new therapy group. Encounters where you see several men for the sole purpose of showing their wilder side, their most animal side with blows. Tyler is the guru of this group, the spiritual guide, in charge of extracting all the anger and anger from within these men.
These struggles help men free themselves from social pressures, abandon the slavery in which they live, not to think and simply to let themselves be dragged on their more violent side.
As Tyler explains, did the cinema make us think we could be rock stars, famous actors?The media has imposed very high targets on us, but in the meantime, we’re locking ourselves in an office and having enough to buy to be someone.
These problems of insomnia, the contemporary disease of this protagonist, led his personality to unfold, to create a new “I”, to invent Tyler. A dissociative disorder that makes us think of a kind of updated, more beautiful, stronger Mr. Hyde that represents all the hidden desires of the character, all the rage accumulated over years before society and the world around it.
In addition to the struggles, a conspiracy appears, several attacks are planned with a deep sense of freedom, anarchy; attacks that do not go against people, but seek to destroy large companies, buildings and symbols of contemporary slavery.
Clube da Luta is a stinger, a nihilistic discourse, an attack at the end of the century and the beginning of the next; a blow to Hollywood, capitalism and ourselves. Everyone, at some point, wanted to be like Tyler.
“It is only when everything is lost that we are free to act. -Club of wrestling-