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Leaving the theater after seeing Fight Club last autumn, I was definitely dazed by the experience, but at the same time giddy at the prospects that the movie had sparked in me. David Fincher’s observations on ’90s pop culture and consumerism are unquestionably radical in comparison to standard Hollywood fare. 

As a result, Fincher succeeded in disappointing a mob of straight-and-narrow critics as well as the action-hounds who expected an ultra-chic bloodfest. Yet the film has already garnered a prestigious spot in the cult canon. 

Even before its release, Fight Club was protested and ostracized by most audiences because so few people were comfortable taking the film on its own polemical terms. 

At the core of Fight Club lies issues of subversion, conformity, and identity, which all come into play in the life of the film’s nameless protagonist, who is played by Ed Norton. 

Norton’s character is a restless and depressed insomniac, bored with his hum-drum life. That is, until anarchistic wildman Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt, enters into it and rescues him from the conventions of society. They begin to relish irrationally, and this leads to a fist-fighting club, through which they can experience the shunned but destructive exhilaration of violence. As the club grows in popularity, things quickly get out of hand, and the bastion of freedom and iconoclasm degenerates into the exclusive, fascistic, homogenizing mess that the members were initially trying to escape. 

Fincher isn’t suggesting we blow up our apartments and beat up our friends. He’s wisely showing us that such extreme reactions breed their own evils, and all the while teaches us to question the arguments of both sides, neither of which may be completely correct. 

If you’re open enough to let Fight Club question and test the things that you know about life, you might discover something that you never knew about yourself.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls will play Friday in Science Center 150 for free. Fargo will play in SC150 on Saturday for $2. Fight Club will play Friday and Saturday in the Cinema for $2. All shows start at 7:30 and 10:00 p.m.