Top 5: Lines from My Favorite Movie

If you've been keeping up with this blog, then you know that I started a new feature counting down to Christmas. I have spend the last few weeks posting every day about the holiday, and it has taught me one thing: I am sick of talking about Christmas. I love the holiday, and all of the things that go along with it, but I don't think I can write yet another post about it. So for today's Top 5 I decided to talk about something about as far from Christmas as possible: Fight Club.

Fight Club is my favorite movie. I'm not sure why - it's violent, has a ton of bad language, and plenty of disturbing imagery. But the storyline, the cinematography, the acting, I love all of it. I get the best double-take reactions when people ask my favorite film and I tell them that it's Fight Club. Apparently I look like a fan of The Notebook or something? I don't know. I've read the book by Chuck Palahniuk also, and all of his books I've read are equally fascinating and disturbing. Both are wonderfully quotable, and below the jump are my Top 5 favorite lines from the film. 



5. "With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels." 

There are a lot of flashbacks in this film, so I'm not sure if this is at the beginning at the end, but at this point in the film Brad Pitt has a gun in Ed Norton's mouth. And it's true, he did only speak in weird vowels.

4. "This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time."

I know a lot of people look at this movie and see a testosterone-filled blood fest but the characters bring some really great commentary on the purpose of life. Is there more to existence than showing up for work and ordering all your furniture form the Ikea catalog? Yes. Does that mean you should burn down your apartment and start making soap in your basement with your imaginary friend? Probably not. But this quote is still applicable. 


3. "On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero." 

In other words, you won't live forever. It's just a fact. The narrator in the movie spends a lot of time with the terminally ill (he crashes support groups) so he has a lot of first-had experience with the dying. And as messed up as his life is, I think it helped him understand how fleeting life can be.

2. "It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything." 

This is probably my favorite inspirational quote from this movie, if there can be such a thing. I have a tendency to find inspiration in the most ridiculous places - as you can probably tell - and really like this sentiment. Before you can do the things you want to do, you have to get rid of all the rest of the junk in your life. Who knew you could learn so much from Tyler Durden? 

1. "I am Jack's smirking revenge."  /  "I am Jack's complete lack of surprise." 

I chose the "I am Jack's..."  lines from the film as my favorite quote of the movie because I couldn't choose my favorite. I used to have a list and I think there are like 8 variations throughout the film. In the books Palahnuik used a name other than Jack, although I can't remember which one. They don't make any sense outside of the context of the movie, which is kind of why I love them - you only get it if you are a fan. Which I am.

I could go on and on about the things I love about this movie (Helena Bonham-Carter, Jared Leto, the spliced-in scenes, etc.) but I will spare you for now. Maybe next Christmas.

In the Eye of the Beholder

One of the many things I love about college is the constant flow of things to stimulate your mind. I'm in a class on Aesthetics right now, and it is making me think about things like what makes things beautiful, how do you define art, and what it means to be truly alive. We've been reading a lot of different essays, from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and Hume to L'Engle (of A Wrinkle in Time fame). Needless to say these have brought up more questions than they have answered. Can you create a formula to define art? Is beauty in the eye of the beholder or are there some who have better opinions than others? Are things only beautiful because we have decided they are beautiful or would they be beautiful if there was no one to look at them?

In Aesthetics last week our professor had us watch the movie My Dinner with Andre. It's a fascinatingly simple movie, with two men sitting down to dinner discussing what they've been doing with their lives since they last saw one another. They talk of how it sometimes feels as if they are living in a dreamworld, nothing more than zombies, in a world that is nothing more than a play. The question comes when Andre argues that there must be more. Wally, on the other hand, believes that the simple things are all you need. He is happy with an electric blanket and a cup of coffee in the morning, while Andre wants to dive into the world and find everything it has to offer. I suggest watching it, not because it has great cinematography (it doesn't) but because its lack of visual interest will force you to think.

"Comfort can lull you into a dangerous tranquility."

Andre says this at one point, and I think it's true. I have experienced it first hand. We all have. You get into the routing of something, and the next thing you know, three months have flown by and you have no idea where they have gone. You are so comfortable in your ways that nothing matters anymore. It's like the narrator at the beginning of Fight Club. I freaking love that movie. I'm getting ready to read the book, which I have been told is even better. But I digress. At the beginning of the film, Edward Norton's character has gotten to the point that he can't even sleep at night, he is so discontented. He tries to fill his life with Ikea furniture and support groups but even that doesn't seem to fill the void. He realizes that his life is passing him by and uses Tyler to try and fill it. To some extent each of us have a Tyler.

So I am hearing about beauty and love and art from all different directions right now. The speaker in Chapel on Monday spoke on "the presence and possibility of beauty in our lives" and how being close to Jesus and letting his beauty into our lives can transform us from ugly to beautiful. The Lecture Artist Series on campus included guest speaker Dr. Walter Brueggemann, who was here on Tuesday March 4th. The series this year is on Imagination and the Kingdom of God, and Dr. Brueggemann spoke about the fact that believing in Jesus takes a lot of imagination, among other things. Some other lines of his that I wrote down:

"The kingdom of God is ultimate, and all else is penultimate."

"The real stuff by which we are human comes in elusive artistic form."

"It is hard for us to embrace God's kingdom because we like to think we can do better."

and finally, my favorite line,

"Our society does not need anymore educated conformists."

I love that. A big frustration of mine is conformity. I do not think it is worth it to pretend to be just like everyone else just to be liked by others. And I see that happening around me all the time, especially with girls here on our campus. It is sad how many of them come here not to get an education but find a husband. I actually know young women who are majoring in Family and Consumer Sciences just to learn how to be a wife and mother. That really bothers me. If you meet someone in college that you fall in love with and marry, that's all fine and well, but college is not a $20,ooo a year dating service. Personally, individuality is a big thing for me. I get really annoyed when a girl changes her entire character just to impress a guy. A friend of mine started dating a guy a few months ago and since then has changed her wardrobe, her sense of humor, her whole outlook on life. We, her friends, are frustrated because wanting the admiration of this one guy has completely changed her.

I don't know where I am going with all this, or what conformity has to do with beauty. Maybe nothing, maybe everything. It doesn't matter. I've rambled on long enough.