Fight Club is a 1999 American feature film adaptation of the 1996 novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk. The film was directed by David Fincher and follows a nameless protagonist (Edward Norton), an everyman and an unreliable narrator who feels trapped with his white-collar position in society. The narrator gets involved in a fight club with soap salesman Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and becomes tangled up in a relationship triangle with Durden and a destitute woman, Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter).
Thematically, the film was intended to represent the conflict between a generation of young people and the value system of advertising. The film's use of violence in the fight clubs was intended to serve as a metaphor for feeling based on the generation's conflict. The director carried homoerotic overtones over from Palahniuk's novel to implement in the film, believing that the overtones would make audiences uncomfortable and thereby keep them from anticipating the twist ending.
The film found commercial success with its DVD release, which established Fight Club as a cult film. The film has also permeated American society, inspiring people to set up fight clubs.
In Fight Club, the nameless narrator is an everyman who lacks a world of possibilities and initially cannot find a way to change his life. The narrator finds himself unable to match society's requirements for happiness and so embarks on a path to enlightenment which involves metaphorically killing his parents, his God, and his teacher. At the beginning of the film, the narrator has killed off his parents but still finds himself trapped in his false world. The narrator then meets Tyler Durden, with whom he kills his metaphorical God by going against the norms of society. Ultimately, the narrator has to kill his teacher, Tyler Durden, to complete the process of maturity.
Screenwriter Jim Uhls described the film as a "romantic comedy", explaining, "It has to do with the characters' attitudes toward a healthy relationship, which is a lot of behavior which seems unhealthy and harsh to each other, but in fact does work for them—because both characters are out on the edge psychologically." In the film, the narrator seeks intimacy, but he avoids it at first with Marla Singer, seeing too much of himself in her. Though Marla presents a seductive and negativist prospect for the narrator, he instead embraces the novelty and excitement that Tyler Durden has to offer him. The narrator finds himself comfortable having the personal connection to Tyler Durden, but he becomes jealous when Marla becomes sexually involved with Tyler. When the narrator argues with Tyler about their friendship, Tyler explains that the relationship between the two men is secondary to the active pursuit of the philosophy they had been exploring. Tyler also suggests doing something about Marla, implying that she is a risk to be removed. When Tyler says this, the narrator realizes that his desires should have been focused on Marla and begins to diverge from Tyler's path.
The unreliable narrator is not immediately aware that Tyler Durden is, in fact, himself, and he also mistakenly promotes the fight clubs as a way to feel powerful. Contrarily, the narrator's physical condition worsens while Tyler Durden's appearance improves. Although Tyler initially embarks on a journey with the narrator in desiring the "real experiences" of actual fights, he eventually becomes a Nietzschean model that manifests the nihilistic attitude of rejecting and destroying institutions and value systems. His impulsive nature, representing the id, conveys an attitude that is seductive and liberating to the narrator and the followers. However, Tyler's initiatives and methods eventually become dehumanizing, as when he orders around the members of Project Mayhem with a megaphone in similar fashion to the approach of Chinese re-education camps. At this point, the narrator pulls back from Tyler and retreats as Tyler moves forward. In the end, the narrator is able to arrive at a middle ground between his two conflicting selves.
Tyler Durden's recitation of the rules of fight club is considered one of the most quoted monologues in cinema:
The first rule of fight club is... you do not talk about fight club.
The second rule of fight club is... you do not talk about fight club.
Third rule of fight club, someone yells "Stop!", goes limp, taps out, the fight is over.
Fourth rule, only two guys to a fight.
Fifth rule, one fight at a time, fellas.
Sixth rule, no shirts, no shoes.
Seventh rule, fights will go on as long as they have to.
And the eighth and final rule, if this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight.
The Fight Club Rules
Music soundtrack : Where is my mind? (The Pixies)
Movie's secrets:
The last image of film is in fact a penis (2h10min40sec). The image is visible for a very short time and it is a reference to a scene from the film. The same kind of subliminal image (an erect penis imminent) is visible at the beginning of the Ingmar Bergman film, Persona, which was strongly inspired Fincher.
In the first minutes of the film, there are four images "pseudo subliminal" the character of Tyler Durden:
- 3min57 "everything is a copy of a copy of a copy"
- 6min04 "I am in pain"
- 7min15 "We give each other strength"
- 12min06 "Next group"
These images appear on screen and are probably also refers to a particular scene of the film (where the narrator describes one of the jobs of Tyler; cutter in a cinema). But these images do not only refer to this scene: they are also linked to chronic insomnia narrator. The latter, half awake half asleep, just to see Tyler, who is not present at the beginning of the film. If we pay attention to the narrator's response after each occurrence, you can probably find it is really Tyler. In fact, when Tyler appears permanently in the film, these images stop appearing.
Before the truth is actually revealed (when the bartender assures the narrator that his name is Tyler Durden), many clues are left about the schizophrenia of the narrator:
- 18m57s: The narrator asks if we can wake up in the skin of someone else at the same time Tyler was behind him.
- 22m22s The narrator realizes that he has exactly the same suitcase as Tyler.
- 38m37s: Tyler tells his student life to the narrator, who replied "Same for me."
- 44m45s: As the narrator is in hospital, he said "Sometimes Tyler spoke for me."
- 46m45s The narrator dreams that he had sex with Marla. In reality this is not a dream, they are memories of his true personality.
- 50m15s: Tyler tells the narrator about Marla: "You see what I mean, you've fucked." Indeed, it is the narrator who had Marla frolics with the previous night.
- 55m12s: Tyler ordered the narrator about the fire in his apartment: "Tell him that you blew all that." Indeed, it is the narrator himself who set fire to his apartment.
- 74m40sec: The narrator, simulating being hit by its manager, said: "I do not know why, I thought of my first fight with Tyler."
Without the producers and directors’ comments from (on DVD), there is no way to know the real name of the narrator (who is, actually, the main character). His name is not present during the film, nor in the credits (Narrator role as Edward Norton). However, at the beginning of the film, at the support group for men who have had testicular cancer, Bob called the narrator "Cornelius" (8min21, 65min7). His name remains a mystery all along the film, until Tyler called him "Jack" (minute 127). "Jack" also refers to a book (which the narrator has probably written himself) which he found in the house, the narrator told Tyler he had to find a book with hundreds of lines of poetry written by organs of a certain Jack. This suggests, at this stage, that Tyler calls the narrator Jack because of a relationship with these books, or because it was his real name. These lines (found the book) are included throughout the film by the narrator:
o I am Jack's medulla oblongata. (minute 37)
o I am Jack's colon. (minute 37)
o I am Jack’s raging bile duct. (minute 50)
o I am Jack's cold sweat. (minute 53)
o I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise. (minute 72)
o I am Jack’s smirking revenge. (minute 73)
o I am Jack's wasted life. (minute 75)
o I am Jack’s absolute lack of surprise. (minute 76)
o I am Jack’s inflamed sense of rejection. (minute 91)
o I am Jack’s broken heart. (minute 99)
When the narrator and Tyler met in the plane, Tyler mentioned that that the characters on the emergency procedures illustrations look too quiet and they do not represent reality, it ' is another way to calm the panic of the passengers in case of crash or flight problems. Later, we see briefly the new posters that the monkeys have made up, and people who are panicked at the end of their concerns.
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