This may be more accurately described as a commentary, as seeing the movie first, without being prepared for it, will make this make more sense. This is intended to explore a certain angle on the philosophy of the movie, where there is so much more than simply philosophy to keep this movie going, humor being one of the primaries.
The movie begins at the end, and fasts backwards to the beginning of despair of manhood. "Bob had bitch tits." The support group for testicular cancer survivors portends the emasculation our society has embraced, wept over, and become addicted to. The evisceration of strength is completed with symbols of corporate America, cornflower blue ties, style slavery, and plasticism of relationship.
This movie, for me, is about manhood, and the struggle to find it. It encompasses an internal struggle, modeled by the Narrator on one side, and Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) on the other. The Narrator (Ed Norton) is the honest self, the one who has been subsumed into the insanity of modern life, the one who men are and yet loathe being; the man who is emerging, becoming Tyler Durden. Durden flashes into the story as a "single serving friend," on a business flight. He is everything the Narrator wants to be, strong, independent, having direction, free from the expectations of society, free to be a man.
Helena Bonham Carter, that sweet British film regular, plays the woman who understands the Narrator, and who understands Tyler Durden, as two sides of a coin. Their first conversation reveals a certain soulness that is lost and confusing throughout the movie. Marla Singer, "the tourist," shares in the excitement and adventure. She is able to complete the Narrator's sentence, one of my favorites: "When people think you're dying, they really, really listen to you, instead of just..." "[Marla Singer] …instead of just waiting for their turn to speak?"
Tyler's first few appearances may be missed on your first viewing, as they are single frame cut-ins to the life of the Narrator. He at once insults and endears the Narrator, as the man who is inside of us, when he makes his first appearance, comes as a shadow, a glitch, an abnormality in our normal lives, then when he makes his grand appearance, giving us an impression that sets us at once in love with and disgusted with ourselves.
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