Fight Club

The 1999 film adaption of the novel Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk, is considered by most to be one of the best interpretations of a book in cinematic history.  The unique style in which Palahniuk writes makes it difficult for any director to adapt his novels, as he tends to introduce fantasy-based elements gradually, with very subtle hints that generally only take up one sentence.  As a filmmaker, it can be extremely difficult to transform a single sentence in the middle of a rambling paragraph to a cinematic clue to the unfolding of the plot.  Director David Fincher does a terrific job with this aspect, as noted by the scene where Edward Norton’s character looks directly at the screen as if to make eye contact with the audience and explains how Brad Pitt’s character, as a late-night movie theater operator, splices graphic sexual images between frames into the movies he plays.  While it must have been a rather daunting task to interrupt the flow of the movie to have a character directly interact with the audience, Fincher’s decision pays off as the audience feels a new new level of connection with Edward Norton as the main character.

            The biggest theme in this film is the idea of having split personalities and not realizing it until it has become too late.  As in most of Palahniuk’s works, the general story is an outlandish but believable one, until one fantastic element is introduced.  In this case, that element is that Brad Pitt’s character, the alternate personality, has such a realistic presence that he appears capable of physically controlling Edward Norton’s character.  Toward the end of the film, Norton discovers Pitt is simply a figment of his imagination, but all the terrible things Pitt has supposedly done were actually carried out by Norton himself.  Upon this realization, Norton goes to great lengths to stop the inevitable carnage ready to begin and ends up getting into a fist fight with Pitt.  This all occurs as the final steps of the plan devised by Norton/Pitt to bomb all the credit buildings in New York are coming together.  This sets the stage for the single best line of the film: Pitt and Norton are fighting and Norton gets his hands on a gun, which he aims at Pitt, who is standing in front of a truck full of explosives, and Pitt shouts “WHOA! WHOA! WHOA! Okay, you are now firing a gun at your imaginary friend near 400 GALLONS OF NITROGLYCERINE!”  This is such a tremendous exclamation for two reasons: first, it is a moment of spontaneous comedy in the middle of a tense conclusionary fight scene; and second, because it epitomizes Norton’s entire struggle with himself and with his alter-ego of Brad Pitt in a single sentence, showing the exact gravity of the situation he has gotten himself into.

            The methods used by David Fincher to breach the barrier between audience and film are a significant reason for why this work is such a brilliant one.  Aside from the scene where Norton explains Pitt’s “movie-editing” techniques, he also crosses the boundary to speak directly to the audience on a number of other occasions, mostly when he needs to summarize an entire chapter’s worth of detail in a minute or two.  This is a genius method of communication, as the audience becomes entranced with the seemingly unending relationship between narrator and viewer.  Another interesting element of Fincher’s directive notion in this film is that the narrator, Edward Norton, never actually has a name.  In the concluding minutes of the film, we discover he actually is Tyler Durden, the name he had given to his “imaginary friend.”  While the name Tyler Durden is mentioned constantly throughout the movie, nobody ever speaks the name of the main character.  This is because his name is actually Tyler Durden, which adds a new layer of confusion to the plot once all the details of his split personality become available.  Once Pitt explains that he is merely a figment of Norton’s imagination, the audience realizes all the incidents throughout the film in which Norton would normally have given a name, such as when he introduces himself to somebody.  For example, after we learn that Pitt is not a real person, we discover that every time Norton introduces himself, he hands the individual a business card, instead of simply announcing his name.  This is a crucial detail that would be overlooked by many directors and screenwriters, but because Palahniuk made sure to wrap up all the loose ends in his novel, Fincher was not in the position to come up with a way to do so.

            My single favorite aspect of the film was the very last image on the screen, when Edward Norton and his love interest, Marla, are standing inside a massive corporate building, watching the enormous credit buildings explode and collapse.  This scene is magnified by the track “Where is my Mind?” by the Pixies coming on at the perfect moment.  Norton and the girl are in the middle of conversation, and Norton is attempting to rationalize his strange behavior and why he has a bullet wound in his head, and all of a sudden there is this massive explosion that interrupts them, and the song begins.  It is the perfect conclusion song for the film, and the scene comes to an end at the exact right moment.  With all of this going on, the viewer is also entertained with the images of a half-dozen skyscrapers being reduced to rubble almost instantaneously.  Being that the film takes place in NYC and the subject happens to be explosions of big corporate buildings downtown, and considering the past decade of terrorist-related acts, it is refreshing to witness such a scene without all the panic and hysteria that inevitably follows.  Instead, it is simply serene.  Both characters simply watch, awestruck, with a unified and passionate gaze into the carnage.  Even though they are about to be held responsible for mass terrorism and Norton has just realized he is a paranoid schizophrenic, everything is at peace, at least for the moment.