existentialism in movies

A comment to someone's Facebook reel made me think about existentialism in movies and more specifically American Beauty and Fight Club.

Varianta în limba română pe FaṭăCarte Meta Zamolxis.

• A comment on some old movies mentioned existentialist philosophers.
• I did not fully agree and used AI to verify my assumptions.

I mentioned passingly American Beauty in a short blurb on the Sensation of Sight. Given the many decades that have passed since this movie came out, it’s not fresh in my mind. I do remember it as being “existentialist” in its themes. So, naturally, when someone made a short video mentioning it and some algorithm, somewhere, brought it to my attention, I looked at the comments.

A comment that makes a connection between Kierkegaard and American Beauty (AB) on one hand and Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Fight Club (FC) on the other stuck with me.

Everybody became Ricky without the existential depth or purpose. Ricky recorded to chase the beauty in his memories. People now just record everything like a throwaway soundbite. For clicks or views or some other shallow, disposable, superficial reason they won't even remember after 15 seconds of doomscrolling. That's not even to say Ricky was right. Lester was chasing the memories in his own way. Kevin Spacey getting into trouble for SA is just another dash of irony in the present day. Really both films are prophetic in their own way, and both have alot to say about human nature within their own polarities. Fight club is basically an ode to Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Whereas American Beauty is rooted in Kierkegaardian existentialism, and some Buddhist concepts like "finding beauty in the mundane".

In case you’re wondering, it’s from a video by Jason Pargin and I linked his social media accounts below.

There’s a reply to the above that might jog your memory (it helped me as well).

I think a hell of a lot of men in their 40’s and 50’s saw the similarities between Lester’s loveless marriage + his fixation on the sex-kittenish appeal of the projective + precocious schoolgirl he ends up tenderly rejecting as a wake up call. Lester tells The Man to go eff himself, gets his golden handshake, starts smoking dope + getting fit + trying to re-capture a last shot at fleeting vigour + lust, no matter how misplaced + inappropriate. My marriage ended up same-same in that my ex lost interest in US, a fact I had pointed out to her over the years but was unable to prevent. Now, I’m 58 + in a new relationship + have lost weight + am accepting new challenges, a huge change from where I was when this thoughtful movie first came out. The best part is my relationship with my 3 kids is strong + my new family have the same manners + morals as I do. How good was the gay KSpacey in the role of Lester, btw!!! Nailed it.

The author talks in the Reel about how AB aged. Let me clarify: I liked both movies (A LOT!), but AB seemed better suited in its movie incarnation, whereas FC, though a great movie too, tries much more and doesn’t succeed just as well, mostly because of its novel heritage.

The parallels drawn in the first comment don’t necessarily hold in my mind – in fact both protagonists go through a crisis that’s quite existential in nature, but neither is sufficiently specific to a particular body of existentialist philosophy work.

I started exploring the two works connections with existentialism using AI, and here’s the first conclusion:

American Beauty and Fight Club dramatize the existential struggle articulated by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Lester Burnham illustrates Kierkegaard’s despair and Nietzsche’s failed revaluation of values, while Tyler Durden embodies Nietzsche’s Übermensch but collapses into herd authoritarianism, echoing Kierkegaard’s warning about false leaps into authenticity. Together, these films show how existential philosophy remains deeply relevant in modern contexts: suburban conformity and consumer culture demand confrontation with despair, rebellion, and the search for authentic meaning.

I will continue the exploration in this doc.

Sources / More info: cpms-abtsz, ytjp, ttjp, mtjp, imdb-fc, imdb-ab,

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