It’s the Sunday Movie Showdown, The American Film Institute’s (AFI)
Top 100 vs. the Internet Movie Databases’ (IMDb) Top 100.
#17: The
Graduate vs. Fight Club
Let’s not
waste any time here. My vote goes to Fight Club. I have less tolerance
for The Graduate than I do for E.T., which is saying a lot. Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin
Braddock is such a tool to me in this film – seriously, I had to sit on my
hands so I wouldn’t slap the television – that despite the movie’s couple of
iconic shots, I just barely was able to sit through it again.
 |
| And you may ask yourself: What have I done? |
Fight Club, interestingly, has a vaguely
similar theme as The Graduate: discovering and
becoming the person you want to be rather than the one people/advertising tell
you to be. The film is about fighting other people, sure, but it’s really
about fighting yourself. And accepting that when you fight yourself you’re both
the winner and the loser.
I didn’t
see Fight Club when it released in 1999. I didn’t see it until 2011, and
it helped me slide right smack into the middle into my mid-life crisis. The
film spoke to me in ways I would’ve sworn a David Fincher flick never could.
Instead
of talking about the film itself (let’s face it, at this point you’ve probably
either seen it or never plan to. It’s not necessarily a movie I would suggest
to anyone), I’m just going to give you a top ten quotes from Fight Club list (and none of them are "the rules" of Fight Club):
10. You met me at a very strange time in my life.
9. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or
unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else.
8. People do it every day, they talk to themselves...
they see themselves as they'd like to be, they don't have the courage you have,
to just run with it.
7. The things you own end up owning you.
6. I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect,
I say let... let’s evolve, let the chips fall where they may.
5. No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that
which does not matter truly slide.
4. If you wake up at a different time in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?
3. We just had a near-life experience, fellas.
2. How much can
you know about yourself, when you've never been in a fight? I don't want to die
without any scars.
1. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
Just in case anyone hasn’t seen the movie and does
actually plan to, I don’t want to give anything away. As you can see from the quotes (some of which
were edited for language), it’s not a feel-good move. Nothing about Fight Club or the main character Tyler
Durden was feel-good.
The thing about Tyler Durden was that he forced people to be what they really
wanted themselves to be. Granted, he did so in the most violent and obnoxious
way possible. But he refused to accept
people’s pathetic excuses for not living the lives they wanted to live.
Stop
being what someone tells you to be and BE WHO YOU ARE.
(Except there would’ve been two dozen f-bombs in that one sentence, along with some sort of violence.)
Think of it this way. Have you ever seen this inspiration quote floating
around on Facebook or Pinterest?
Fight
Club
kind of asked the same question but with a different spin:
Deep inside, I think we all sort of wish that
someone – a Tyler Durden, perhaps – would
force us to be become the person we most desire to become. If we were forced (at threat of violence) to
succeed then the only option would be…
Success.
The movie, at its roots, is about having the guts to completely reduce yourself to your most basic foundation,
strip away everything that doesn’t
really have permanent meaning in your life, and become who you really want to be, embracing the scars that
come along with that process.
Like I said, the movie spoke to me. But I’ll save
the true mid-life crisis post for another time.
Enough waxing poetic. Fight Club gets my vote by a landslide,
bringing the overall score to AFI – 46, IMDb – 38.
Next week is Sunset
Blvd vs. Casablanca, and since
that’s going to be so short (ain’t much that beats Rick & Sam), we’ll
probably get to 2001: A Space Odyssey
vs. Goodfellas -- a more difficult choice since I don’t care
for either.
AFI’s Top 100
|
IMDb’s Top 100 (as of 1/1/12)
|
|
46
|
38
|
|
| #11 | City Lights (1931) | LoTR: Return of the King (2003) |
#17
|
The Graduate (1967)
|
Fight
Club (1999)
|
#18
|
The General (1927)
|
City
of God (2002)
|
| #19 | On the Waterfront (1954) | LoTR: Fellowship of the Ring (2001) |
#20
|
It's
a Wonderful Life (1946)
|
Rear Window (1954)
|
#21
|
Chinatown (1974)
|
Once
Upon a Time in the West (1968)
|
| #22 |
Some
Like It Hot (1959)
|
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
|
#23
|
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
|
Toy
Story 3 (2010)
|
#24
|
E.T.
the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
|
Psycho (1960)
|
#25
|
To
Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
|
The Usual Suspects (1995)
|
#26
|
Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
|
The Matrix (1999)
|
#27
|
High
Noon (1952)
|
Silence of the Lambs (1991)
|
#28
|
All About Eve (1950)
|
Se7en
(1995)
|
#29
|
Double
Indemnity (1944)
|
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
|
#30
|
Apocalypse Now (1979)
|
Memento
(1990)
|
| #31 | The Maltese Falcon (1941) | LoTR: The Two Towers(2002) |
#32
|
The Godfather Part II (1974)
|
Sunset
Boulevard (1950)
|
#33
|
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
|
Dr.
Strangelove (1964)
|
#34
|
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
(1937)
|
Forrest
Gump (1994)
|
#35
|
Annie
Hall (1977)
|
Leon: The Professional (1994)
|
#36
|
The
Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
|
Citizen Kane (1941)
|
| #37 | The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) | Apocalypse Now (1979) |
| #38 | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) | North By Northwest (1959) |
| #39 | Dr. Strangelove (1964) | American Beauty (1999) |
| #40 | The Sound of Music (1965) | American History X (1998) |
| #41 | King Kong (1933) | Taxi Driver (1976) |
| #42 | Bonnie and Clyde (1967) | Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) |
| #43 | Midnight Cowboy (1969) | Saving Private Ryan (1998) |
| #44 | The Philadelphia Story (1940) | Vertigo (1958) |
| #45 | Shane (1953) | Amelie (2001) |
| #46 | It Happened One Night (1934) | Alien (1979) |
| #47 | A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) | Wall E (2008) |
| #48 | Rear Window (1954) | Lawrence of Arabia (1962) |
| #49 | Intolerance (1916) | The Shining (1980) |
| #50 | LoTR: Fellowship of the Ring (2001) | Spirited Away (2001) |
| #51 | West Side Story (1961) | Paths of Glory (1957) |
| #52 | Taxi Driver (1976) | A Clockwork Orange (1971) |
| #53 | The Deer Hunter (1978) | Double Indemnity (1944) |
| #54 | M*A*S*H* (1970) | To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) |
| #55 | North by Northwest (1959) | The Pianist (2002) |
| #56 | Jaws (1975) | The Lives of Others (2006) |
| #57 | Rocky (1976) | The Departed (2006) |
#58
|
The Gold Rush (1925)
|
Memento
(2000)
|
| #59 | Nashville (1975) | City Lights (1931) |
#60
|
Duck
Soup (1933)
|
Aliens (1986)
|
#61
|
Sullivan's Travels (1941)
|
Eternal
Sunshine of a Spotless Mind (2004)
|
#62
|
American
Graffiti (1973)
|
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
|
#63
|
Cabaret
(1972)
|
Das Boot (1981)
|
#64
|
Network (1976)
|
The
Third Man (1949)
|
#65
|
The African Queen (1951)
|
L.A.
Confidential (1997)
|
#66
|
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
|
Reservoir
Dogs (1992)
|
#67
|
Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
|
Chinatown (1974)
|
#68
|
Unforgiven
(1992)
|
The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948)
|
#69
|
Tootsie
(1982)
|
Modern Times (1936)
|
#70
|
A
Clockwork Orange (1971)
|
Life is Beautiful (1997)
|
#71
|
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
|
Monty
Python & the Holy Grail (1975)
|
#72
|
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
|
Back
to the Future (1985)
|
#73
|
Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid
(1969)
|
The
Prestige (2006)
|
#74
|
Silence of the Lambs (1991)
|
Pan’s
Labyrinth (2006)
|
#75
|
In
the Heat of the Night (1967)
|
Raging Bull (1980)
|
#76
|
Forrest
Gump (1994)
|
Cinema Paradiso (1988)
|
#77
|
All
the President’s Men (1976)
|
Singing In the Rain (1952)
|
#78
|
Modern
Times (1936)
|
Some Like it Hot (1959)
|
#79
|
The
Wild Bunch (1969)
|
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
|
#80
|
The
Apartment (1960)
|
Rashomon (1950)
|
#81
|
Spartacus
(1960)
|
All About Eve (1950)
|
#82
|
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
|
Amadeus
(1984)
|
#83
|
Titanic (1997)
|
Once
Upon A Time in America (1984)
|
#84
|
Easy
Rider (1969)
|
The Green Mile (1999)
|
#85
|
A
Night at the Opera (1935)
|
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
|
#86
|
Platoon (1986)
|
2001:
A Space Odyssey (1968)
|
#87
|
12
Angry Men (1957)
|
Inglorious Basterds (2009)
|
#88
|
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
|
The
Great Dictator (1940)
|
#89
|
Sixth Sense (1999)
|
Braveheart
(1995)
|
#90
|
Swing
Time (1936)
|
The Bicycle Thief (1948)
|
#91
|
Sophie’s Choice (1982)
|
The
Apartment (1960)
|
#92
|
Up (2009)
|
Goodfellas
(1990)
|
#93
|
The French Connection (1971)
|
Downfall
(2004)
|
#94
|
Pulp Fiction (1994)
|
Gran
Torino (2008)
|
#95
|
The
Last Picture Show (1971)
|
Metropolis (1927)
|
#96
|
Do The Right Thing (1989)
|
The
Sting (1973)
|
#97
|
Blade Runner (1982)
|
Gladiator
(2000)
|
#98
|
Yankee
Doodle Dandy (1942)
|
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
|
#99
|
Toy Story (1995)
|
Unforgiven
(1992)
|
#100
|
Ben Hur (1959)
|
The
Elephant Man (1980)
|
Haha, a wasp trying to understand fightclub...and claiming it is better then the graduate? good lord what an idiot
ReplyDeleteFight club is the best of all time....
ReplyDelete