Review of Fight Club (1999)
Hugely influential. Like the Old Testament (ca. 164 BCE), it is almost entirely negative and cynical with brief moments of a more positive vision that admits some potential for happiness. It is interesting to me that the supposedly positive vision of Fight Club is one of primitivism, completing a general criticism of modern society that goes back to the ancient world. This is quite common. There is a similarly naïve dream of fulfillment through primitive struggle in many other works, including “Scanners Live in Vain” (1950). The fact that it would not work and cannot be attained in Fight Club puts the final nail in the coffin of macho men as they are imagined in this movie.
References here: The Meaning of Life (1983), Source Code (2011), Truther or: I Am Not a Conspiracy Theorist (2019), Joker (2019).