Talking to Myself

I just finished reading the book last night. Having watched the movie before, I found both the book and the novel appealing, despite the gory violence and some alterations in the narratives.

Violence and mayhem are the tools used to deliver the author's message to his audience. It is an effective way to deliver commentaries about modern life. (Although I personally don't agree to the use of such extreme physical abuse.)

The characters comment on how people nowadays try to find meaning in their lives through an empty commercial culture. The narrator, for example, treats his apartment (with the furnitures, fixtures and appliances) as his life. And his life was destroyed when his apartment exploded.

I also like the story's commentary about modern men - how men are dissatisfied with the state of masculinity. The men see themselves as a "generation of men raised by women", being without a male role model in their lives to help shape their masculinity.. Their fathers have either abandoned their family or divorced their mothers.

All throughout the movie and book, I can sense the anger and the rage that these men felt against their lives. These people are trapped and they struggle to find some way of connecting to other people and their own emotions. The narrator, for example, is an insomniac who could only sleep whenever he attends various anonymous cancer support groups, pretends to be a cancer survivor and cries in the arms of other patients.

My only problem with the movie is the casting of Brad Pitt as Tyler. The characters in the story are regular joes, men who aren't model handsome or physically fit, the way Brad Pitt is. There's a scene in the movie when Tyle (Pitt) makes fun of slender/muscular male models, saying that these are not real men. But then again, Brad Pitt portrayed the character well enough.

I do like the minor alterations made between the movie and novel. Both have different endings and I find that they work good both ways. The movie ending had a more thunderous/explosive grand finale, whole the story ending had a more quiet, peaceful (yet disturbing) resolution.