Films Analysis Essay on Fight Club and The Godfather

Fight Club (1999)

Essentially, this movie focuses on the life of an anonymous narrator, who is carved out as a disgruntled office worker on a desperate mission to change his life. He runs into Tyler Durden, a soap maker, and they jointly establish a fight club where men can participate in recreational bouts. The narrator is entrapped in a relationship triangle with Durden and Marla Singer, a self-indulgent woman.

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The concept of realist realism is presented in the film through the collaboration between Tyler and the narrator in forming a fight club, which would bestow leisure benefits to both of them and other men. Moreover, with time, other fight clubs are instituted across the country and all join to form an anti-corporate alliance, which they referred to as Project Mayhem. From the lectures, postulations drawn from this concept maintain that both acquisition and balance of power between hegemons is paramount to guaranteeing one's security. Tyler, albeit without the narrator's knowledge, persuades rival fight clubs into forming an alliance that would eliminate tyrannical influences from any particular entity that considered itself more powerful than the rest. Tyler is also able to recruit Jared Leto, a fighter who assists him in conducting Project Mayhem's operations of uniting all affiliate clubs.

Also, as observed in the lectures, the decline of one of the strongest dominions in Europe, the Holy Roman Empire, was marked by a persistent conflict between Protestants and Catholics, who were the empire's founding groups. A similar context is evident in the film, whereby the narrator's dissociated personalities come to haunt him at the end of the film when he decides to kill Tyler (who is one of his personas) after discovering Tyler's scheme to decimate buildings where records of credit card companies were kept. Their ensuing confrontation marks the end of the project mayhem empire, which had been brewing since the narrator started becoming jealous of Tyler's intimate relationship with Marla.

The Godfather (1972)

This film introduces its audience to an ageing patriarch, Vito Corleone, who runs an organized crime empire but later relinquishes control of his underground dynasty to his unenthusiastic son, Michael Corleone. In the course of the movie, Michael, who was a soldier during the First World War, gradually develops into a coldblooded mafia chief who spells fear across the empire.2

Like in the World War I setting explained in the lectures where major European countries formed alliances to conquer their adversaries, this film depicts a developing contest between Vito's crime family, under the leadership of his son, and five other crime dynasties. Vito is approached by Sollozzo, a drug baron, who requests Vito to venture into his narcotics trade as well as protect him through his political acquaintances. Vito declines the offer and eventually instigates a feud between his empire and the Tattaglia family, which Sollozzo is affiliated to.

The end of World War I saw the League of Nations formed to guarantee collective security among the warring alliances. They signed a treaty that endorsed a collective intervention by members against any nation that acted violently against the rest. These countries would, therefore, collaborate for everyone's best interests. This situation is also seen in the film, where after realizing the Tattaglias' warfare superiority which saw one of his son's killed, Vito ends the strife by reassuring his investment in the drugs business and forgoing any vengeance mission for his son's assassination. Consequently, his family's safety is assured, which not only initiates a successful narcotics business between the Tattaglias and the Vitos but also sees Michael marrying Kay, a woman allied to the Tattaglias, to signify a budding social relation between the two families.

Bibliography

"The Godfather 1972 1080P Full Movie". 2017. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ65BlScjBI.

"Watch Fight Club (1999) - Full Movie Streaming". 2018. Movi4k.Us. http://movi4k.us/play.php?movie=0137523.