Fight Club

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR91Rj1ZN1M

Although, Fight Club cannot be completely grasped in only one line, if I had to choose one line to summarize the film, the film’s final line would be my top candidate: “You met me at a very strange time in my life.” Throughout Fight Club, the narrator, played by Edward Norton, struggles with many of the same existential issues that Sartre also grappled with, and it is his journey to define himself that establishes the basis for the entire film.
When we first meet our narrator, who later refers to himself as Jack, he is an automobile recall specialist that suffers from insomnia. Although he is not consciously aware of it, he is the epitome of existence precedes essence. Jack has been following the path that his parents, and more generally, society as a whole, set for him when he is young. He makes few important choices that truly define him, instead he seeks to define himself through the way he decorates his apartment. Jack, like so many others, is so consumed by consumerism, that he has come to define himself by his material possessions and not his character. That all changes, of course, when he meets Tyler.
Tyler, his subconscious alter ego, shows him that he is a mere shell of what he can be.
Fight Club also explores the angst of the human condition. Throughout the film, when the narrator faces a difficult choice he often resorts back to what he has done in the past: nothing. For example, when Marla calls him to tell him that she overdosed on pills, the narrator fails to do anything, and instead, it his alter ego, Tyler, that makes a decision for him. By the end of the film, when Jack realizes Tyler’s entire plan, he knows he must do something. However, he is so torn between the consequences of his decision that he almost resolves to do nothing at all. However, his time with Tyler has taught him that it his responsibility to make choices, and with that he is able to imagine the gun in his hand, not Tyler’s, and he makes the most important decision of the entire film, to shoot himself, and thereby kill Tyler.