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Essay Of Fight Club And Memento

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Critical Essay by Agnes Bruinsma 385859 “When you have insomnia, you're never really asleep... and you're never really awake” (Fight Club, date). The neo-noir movies Fight Club (1999) and Memento (2001) illustrate a reality, as seen by the protagonists. However, what exactly is reality? This issue is employed skilfully in both Fight Club and Memento, which makes them interesting to watch and analyse. The Usual Suspects, another neo-noir film, also employs the issue reality in the narrative but, it differs from Fight Club and Memento, as reality is twisted by intention. This critical essay will take a look at the different causes for a distorted reality, how the protagonists receive reality, the use of narrative to create a distorted reality …show more content…

In an effort to feel something, he pretends to have diseases like prostate cancer and shows up to support groups of terminal illness, which provide him a space to cry. This gives relieve to his insomnia for a short while. However, the narrator suffers again from insomnia, pushing him to unconsciously create a split personality named Tyler Durden, who is played by Bratt Pitt. This event changes the narrator’s perception of reality, as he believes to “meet” Tyler Durden at one of his business trips. In the film Memento, a different reality is created as the protagonist Leonard Shelby is suffering from anterograde amnesia, which is short memory retention. He got this memory loss after he was injured while trying to stop two men from raping and killing his wife. The Usual Suspects employs a different kind of mixed reality as the protagonist makes up his own reality, while still being aware of the real reality, and tries to sell this to the cops. The narrator named Jack of Fight Club sees Tyler Durden as another person, which is his reality. After his apartment was blown up, Jack starts to live in Tyler Durden’s house. They create Fight Club together, which is a club that provides men the opportunity to fight each other and show their masculinity. “The first rule about Fight …show more content…

These twists lets one question everything that just happened. In Fight Club, the narrator finds out that Tyler Durden is not another men, but him. This changes the whole context. The audience has no idea that Tyler Durden is the narrator, as they are most likely captivated by his chaotic, sociopathic and masculine character. Once finding out the truth, one needs to rethink the entire film. Every scene has a different meaning once finding out that Tyler and the narrator are one. In Memento Leonard is confronted by Teddy a cop and his ‘friend’ that Sammy Jankis the men Leonard often talks about is actually him. He tells Leonard that he has been lying to himself in order to be happy and that he is chasing a men who he believes is John G. Teddy furthermore suggests that actually has created a different reality in which he is chasing John G, in order to cope with the fact that his condition killed his wife. When Leonard later gets in his car and askes himself “Do I lie to myself to be happy?” (Memento, 2000), which he admits, a distortion in reality is justified by himself. He then makes Teddy the new John G, which changes the way the audience looks at Leonard.
To conclude, both Fight Club and Memento use an unconventional narrative structure and tell thrilling stories. The movies enchant the viewers from the beginning with their absorbing storylines. The distortion of reality is created by protagonist with different views on reality,

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