Fight Club
Dir. David Fincher ~ 1999 ~ USA ~ 139 mins ~ colour
Fight Club, to the uninitiated, may appear to be another basic action film, with violence, explosions, and profanity crammed into the span of two hours without any focus on a comprehensible story. But in reality, it is a film that has many layers to unpack and is more lenient towards being a psychological thriller. But this is regularly seen from the likes of David Fincher (Zodiac, The Social Network). He subverts expectations of what his films are outwardly and leaves the audience processing what they’ve just witnessed long after the film has ended. But the way Fight Club differs from his other works is down to the way it is presented. The swift, jumpy camera movements, flashy editing, and revolutionary use of VFX are a mile away from films like Gone Girl, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Se7en. Not only does this reflect the diversity of Fincher’s work, but it also seems to diverge from anything made before or since.
The film is based on Chuck Palahniuk’s debut novel of the same name, released three years before its movie counterpart. It was adapted for the screen by Fincher and Jim Uhis, whose only other writing credit is the 2008 commercial failure Jumper. The story, which stays reasonably faithful to its source material, follows a nameless insomniac Narrator, portrayed by Edward Norton, who is stuck in a deadend job and boring life and finds relief in attending support groups for an array of different illnesses that he doesn’t have. His life is set off course when two people enter his life: Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), a femme fatale figure to The Narrator who starts to attend his groups and sends him back into his periods of insomnia, and Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), an apparent soap salesman who The Narrator moves into a dingy and abandoned house with after his condo is set on fire. To relieve their inner tension and stress, The Narrator and Tyler start to regularly fight behind an out-of-the-way bar and, over time, gain an audience and new participants who are looking for the same relief they are. This leads to the creation of ‘Fight Club’, an underground society whose expansion leads to the deterioration of The Narrator’s life and sanity as the project spirals out of control.
The film is mostly set at night, when The Narrator and Tyler are the most active, and Fincher takes advantage of this through the film's cinematography. The dark, gritty tones given by the production design are utilised to create a rough and unsettling atmosphere and, by doing so, further immerse the audience into the world of the characters. The soundtrack to the film, created by production duo The Dust Brothers, consists of their trademark electronic hip-hop beats, which keep with the pace of the film and set the scene effectively. Fight Club deals with the subjects of modern-day consumerism, toxic masculinity, and the struggle to preserve past morals. The messages it gives should not be desirably followed or admired, but that may just be the actual message of the story: instead of letting others navigate our lives and control our decisions, your judgement and identity should be discovered by you and you alone.
When it is revealed that Tyler is a delusion caused by The Narrator’s insomnia, paired most likely with dissociative identity disorder, and that all of Tyler’s actions are his, the events of the film before this become clearer. Tyler is seen to have a rampant hatred of consumerism, which is mirrored oppositely by The Narrator’s habit of buying catalogue furniture. When The Narrator’s apartment is burned to ash, it is a symbol that he is leaving this part of his life behind and shows early on the hidden similarities between the two main characters. It is also implied that Tyler caused the supposed accident, suggesting that Tyler is the side of The Narrator’s personality that has all the immoral ideas he doesn’t have the guts to act upon. By having Tyler by his side, he is letting himself be free of his mundane everyday life and is reluctantly adopting his darker side, similar to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and reflected in the use of Where Is My Mind? by Pixies in the film's final moments.
There are also references to fascism through Tyler’s expansion of Fight Club through Project Mayhem, a terrorist organisation created to fight against the feminization of America through capitalism, in a similar vein to the Nazi party. This link to the demasculinizing nature of society can be seen primarily through the character Bob Paulson (Meat Loaf), a testicular cancer survivor who had his testicles removed and is taking doses of oestrogen, which leaves him with ‘bitch tits’. This makes him feel degraded and worthless, so he uses the Fight Club as a way to feel more masculine and strengthen himself as an individual. Bob’s death during a Project Mayhem mission is taken advantage of by the group and becomes a morale booster as he is immortalised as a fallen hero to their cause, much like the death of Nazi soldier Horst Wessel in 1940 at the hands of communist Russia.
Another theme that can be perceived is the interpretation of homosexuality through the character Tyler Durden. He has previously been seen to be a materialisation of The Narrator’s repressed sexuality, due to Tyler’s usage of many sexually dubious lines and The Narrator’s dislike of Marla sexually. Tyler’s appearance also reflects the fashion of many openly gay men in 1990s western culture. The author of Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk, is also gay, and some see the story as a reflection of the struggles that face homosexual men and the societal pressure to act masculine.
A motif used throughout the story is the importance of support groups. The Narrator uses them to deal with his mental health issues, and Marla uses them as a form of entertainment. The titular club can also be seen as a makeshift support group itself due to the shared discomfort with daily life felt by all the members and their collectiveness.
The cult status of Fight Club has remained strong for nearly twenty-five years and has come to be featured by many film critics and fans on their all-time greatest film rankings, despite critics’ overall initial dislike of the film. It was revolutionary in its use of then-new production techniques, and its cast and characters are immortalised by the filmgoing public. Fight Club remains a landmark in cinema history and one of the best films of its era. The first-time viewing experience is stupendous and unique, clearly showing why this has cemented itself into the history of cinema.
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