When I first saw the preview of the movie Fight Club, I told myself that “oh, I don’t think I’d be interested in seeing this movie as it looks like a fucked up movie.” So I never made it a point to see it. Then over the past several months multiple people – and some of them people who’s opinion I respect – told me that I have to see this movie. They told me that they can’t tell me anything about it and I just have to watch it. They did tell me that it had a slight cult element to it, which did get my curiousity piqued enough.

So I finally borrowed the DVD from a friend of mine – and it sat on my desk now for a couple of weeks. I put it on a couple of times, but everytime I would begin to watch it, something or the other would come up (generally an IM from someone while I’m watching the movie on my computer since like the guy in the movie said… I only need a single-serving movie player – a movie for one…so the computer works just fine thank you…) and I would never really get to watch more than the opening scene.

Well, tonight, I came home – no scratch that – back to my apartment and popped in the movie and saw it straight through in one sitting. And here is what I really think… I think that is one of the more fucked up movies I have seen and I would put it up there with something as stupid as Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs (can you tell that I dislike movies by Quintin Tarantino and I’m glad that hasn’t made another one in recent times?). What a stupid freaking movie. I cannot think of enough words to kind of pick it apart as well as I would like to.

The guy was a freaking psychopath. And yes, everyone in the world has problems of their own and everyone has things about their life that they like or dislike. I am less disturbed about the movie. I don’t as much of a problem now with seeing people blow a hole through their head with their brains splattering all over or with people beating each other into a pulp… TV and the news has done a wonderful job of de-sensitizing us to the horrors of the world. That is now entertainment for some people. If people can watch stupid shit like WWF and call it entertainment, then heck showing people getting their brains blown off as a form of amusement isn’t far behind now is it.

What *really* bothers me about this movie is the fact that some people actually thought of it as a good movie. Had they described it to me as a “disturbing” movie, I would have been okay with it and probably not been so harsh. But there is a significant different between good and disturbing. It is okay for a movie to be disturbing — because it makes you think. Some people actually told me that they learnt things from this movie. I am afraid to think what they learnt if they called it good and not disturbing.

I’ve now maintained for a long time that the mind is fragile — that’s something I’ve not written about in detail on public blogs — yes there are still things which don’t make it out in to a public forum. It is had enough for people to keep their thinking straight and honestly I just don’t have faith in the ability of the person on the street to be able to look deep enough into a movie like Fight Club in order to figure out what they really should take away from it.

For me, the only thing this movie did that was positive was that it re-affirmed my conviction that the greatest thing to fear is losing the ability to think rationally and your grip on what is perceived as reality. But I knew that already, and I don’t think I needed Fight Club to remind me of it again — I see enough instances of it around me everyday.

P.S. After I wrote this blog I was putting the DVD away and noticed one of the quotes on the inside cover. It said: “…a witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophizing and bone crunching violence that actually thinks it’s saying something of significance” — Kenneth Turan, L.A. Times. Now… if that was the best thing the makers of this movie could pick to quote from the L.A. Times, then gee, I couldn’t say it any better myself.

Flipping through the inside cover of the movie…it seems clear that the movie was intended to be provocative and my reaction to it was in line with the reaction fro a lot of other people who put it more eloquently than I did — but the sad fact is that I don’t have a sense of humor about this stuff any more. It would be humorous if you still believe that “it’s just a movie,” but when you know that there are people out there who are deranged enough to even believe what they see in a movie, then it’s not funny any more.

Some of the choice quotes that are included in the cover of the movie (really, I did get these from the cover..):

“I would deliver a long tirade against it if it weren’t such a dog — such a laborious and foolish waste of time …” — David Denby, The New Yorker.

“Fight Club is to intelligent men what Catherine Breillat’s Romance is to inteliigent women — an insult” — Gregory Weinkauf, New Times, LA.