Wild Card Wednesday: Fight Club

Director: David Fincher

Year: 1999

Genre: Drama/Black Comedy

Summary: An unnamed, depressed man suffering from insomnia - who is an avid member and faker of multiple fatal illness support groups - comes under the thrall of a man that goes by the name of Tyler Durden. The two bored and destructive men form an underground club with strict rules to fight other men who are mutually fed up with their mundane lives. Their perfect partnership frays when Marla, a fellow support group crasher, attracts Tyler's attention, and the fight club becomes anarchic.

4/5 Pineapples

Review:

We are about to break the 1st and 2nd rule of Fight Club.

To my disbelief, some people are still unaware that Fight Club is a movie adapted from a book by the same name that was published in 1996 and written by (my absolute favorite author) Chuck Palahniuk. This author has a way of burrowing into the darkest crevices of the human psyche and pulling you under the wave that is mental illness, paranoia, and an unruly need for social dissection and destruction. Palahniuk's characters are so self-aware, so bitter, and so ready to call the world out on it's shit. To read anything by him, is to get an adrenaline rush of pure emotion, to look into one's self, and to be reborn by the time the emotional thrill-ride is over. Fight Club, the book and film, accomplish exactly that.

After having not watched the film in many years and before reading the book for the first time, a friend told me - maybe more like warned me - that the book and the film are perfect as separate entities. Having since read the book and watched the film, I know exactly what he meant.

In books, you're always going to know and understand the characters on a deeper level. The unnamed narrator of the book is someone that's mind is very complex. Hearing the perfectly casted Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden spew chaotic thoughts about sacrifices being made on hilltops over rivers, about all of us being the same decaying organic matter as anyone else, and about our perception of god being our fathers who bailed on us, can be viewed as passive and baseless thoughts from a complete lunatic while watching the movie. But, the book allows you to really understand and feel the frustration between our narrator and Tyler Durden about the petty, meaningless things our society values. There is a lot of real rage in these characters that I didn't feel was being conveyed in the film as well as it's understood when reading the book. To have a personal one-on-one understanding of our narrator, like the one you acquire by reading the book, is one that I think is extremely important when watching the movie, and it's also an understanding of him that you don't get from just watching the movie alone. Therefore, I'm going to summarize the book and then tackle the differences between it and the film.

Starting from the beginning, we follow our frustrated narrator (played by Edward Norton in the film adaptation) through bouts of insomnia and severe depression. He's got a decent job, a decent apartment, and a decent life surrounded by all of his green hand-blown glass dishes, and his Njurunda coffee table, with his Haparanda sofa... you get the point. But, he's miserable. Miserable from being complete, perfect, and content. Miserable by the idea that everything we do will amount to nothing in the end. Everything we create will one day be trash. Everything we own and define ourselves by hold no real meaning. Everything will one day be blown to bits, in flames, and scattered along the street. Identity: lost. Overall life experience: pointless.

His doctor holds no sympathy for his sleep disorder and instead tells him to experience "real pain", sarcastically suggesting he sit in on support groups for people suffering from fatal diseases like brain parasites and different forms of cancer. Left with hardly any other options, our narrator follows through with the condescending suggestion and discovers his only solace is going to these support groups and crying in the arms of someone who is actually dying from a real terminal illness - his particular favorite, Bob. He finds solace in this because everyone listens to you - truly listens to you - when they believe you're going to die. Being surrounded by so many lives brought to a halt, so many lost opportunities, so much lost hope, and being able to just let go of control and accept the negative outcome of it all was the solution he needed. In his own words, "This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom." And, this complete loss of hope was his cure to his insomnia and his coping mechanism for his depression. Until Marla.

In walks Marla, another support group faker - just like our narrator. But, our narrator loathes her. He loathes her for being a fake and for knowing he too is a fake. She's taking from him his ability to completely let go. She's distracting him and stripping him of the only cure he's got to his insomnia. He's once again unable to sleep. So, our narrator works out a deal with Marla. They exchange numbers and decide to share the support groups by going to the meetings on opposite days of one another. Crisis averted. Right?

...Right?

Our narrator meets Tyler Durden while laying on a nude beach. No one else is present but he and Tyler, and Tyler is propping up 5 logs in the sand. Our narrator is instantly fascinated by Tyler and what he's doing. He discovers that Tyler drew a line in the sand and used the line to gauge the shadow cast by each log to create a shadow of a hand. Based on the position of the sun, the hand would only be perfect at a particular time, and only for one single minute. For only one minute, Tyler sat in the palm of the perfection that he had created. And then it was over. His perfect creation: over. Like it never happened at all.

Tyler is the exact opposite of our narrator. While our narrator fears nothing he does will ever amount to anything, Tyler revels in that fact. Tyler's philosophy from the book, "One minute was enough. A person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection."

On our narrators flight home after a business trip, his luggage is confiscated due to suspicious vibrating. With absolutely none of his possessions, he continues home only to find that, of the entire apartment complex, HIS apartment was blown up by what the police are assuming was a pilot light gas leak. Everything that our narrator owned/everything that defines him/everything that he is: blown up. Non-existant. Poof. Everything he ever feared is now very real.

Our narrator immediately calls Tyler. He's enthralled by this complete stranger, and he genuine believes that Tyler can save him from himself. Feeling absolutely alone and defeated, he believes Tyler is the answer, his father, his god. From the book, as he's dialing on a payphone and listening to it ring, he thinks, "Oh, Tyler, please deliver me. Oh, Tyler, please rescue me. Deliver me from Swedish furniture. Deliver me from clever art. May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. Deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete."

Tyler allows our narrator to live with him in his dilapidated house on Paper St. under one condition: "I want you to hit me as hard as you can." The rush of fighting each other and letting go of all control makes them feel alive. Fighting gives their boring lives purpose. Other men become interested in the same experience until it grows into a large club. It becomes even more established when a local bar gives them free reign of their basement to host what they begin to call Fight Club.

"Welcome to Fight Club. 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: if someone yells “stop!”, goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule: only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule: one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule: the fights are bare knuckle. No shirt, no shoes, no weapons. Seventh rule: fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule: if this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight.”

Our narrator is ENCHANTED by Tyler Durden. He trusts Tyler so much, he let's Tyler burn the back of his hand with lye in the exact shape of his kiss in the middle of their kitchen while rendering human fat to make soap.

Yeah. Infatuation at it's finest.

Their relationship starts to get a bit shaky when Tyler starts sleeping with Marla. Our narrator still hates her. Marla is a reflection of him; a miserable, depressed, fake. Our narrator wants nothing to do with her, and any time Tyler spends with Marla is time that Tyler isn't spending with our narrator. Tyler's attention being on someone other than him infuriates him. But whether he wants to admit it right away or not, both Tyler and Marla are very important to him.

It's important noting that Tyler and Marla are never in the same room together with our narrator.

Pure anarchy ensues when Tyler makes another secret club called Project Mayhem. In Project Mayhem, Tyler dishes out different acts of social defiance that he calls "homework" to it's members. This homework involves things like setting buildings on fire, starting a fight with a complete stranger, and taking a rubber-band and a knife to a police commissioner's testicles. Project Mayhem becomes a sort of recruitment for anyone brave enough to follow through with the homework, strong enough to withstand Tyler's test, and anyone seeking freedom from the confines of a mundane consumerist society. The test involves being told their not good enough, and left on Tyler's porch for a total of 3 days without food and water, without wavering. Once they withstand this test, and so long as they have a sleeping bag, 2 black shirts, 2 black pants, 1 pair of heavy black shoes, 2 pair of black socks and 2 pair of plain underwear, they are recruited as one of Tyler Durden's "space monkeys" for Project Mayhem.

Why would anyone want to be Tyler Durden's space monkey? They believe in his ideologies and support his movement; Our social structure is fucked. There's nothing going for us. Might as well die a legend, if to no one else, to ourselves for one brief moment of perfection. For a fleeting moment of creation even if that creation is the destruction of something else. Bored with your life? Fight someone to get your adrenaline up and feel alive for the first time in your sorry life. Depressed? Hit rock bottom, because at least hitting bottom is DOING something. At least being a part of Fight Club and Project Mayhem is being A PART OF SOMETHING. At least Fight Club and Project Mayhem are reasons to wake up if you manage to sleep at all.

By the time Project Mayhem is more prevalent, our narrator starts seeing less and less of Tyler. The space monkeys are living in bunks, making nitroglycerine, scheming, and gardening in and around the home our narrator and Tyler share together on Paper St. All the monkeys have Tyler's kiss burned into their hand. Our narrator feels abandoned, and somewhat betrayed by Tyler. In a desperate search to find him, he travels from airline bar to airline bar, but can't seem to figure out why everyone addresses him as "Sir", and acts funny when he asks, "has anyone seen Tyler Durden?"

Our narrator loses track of how much he's sleeping versus how much he's awake. Every time he wakes up, Project Mayhem has grown more and created more chaos. Pieces of his memory come together and fall apart again. Piecing the evidence together, he calls Marla to ask if they've ever had sex. She's pissed because yes, they have, and that's when our narrator asks Marla what his name is.

"Tyler Durden. Your name is Tyler Butt-Wipe-for-Brains Durden. You live at 5123 NE Paper Street which is currently teeming with your little disciples shaving their heads and burning their skin off with lye."

When he believes he's asleep, Tyler takes over. Tyler works as a movie projectionist over night and Tyler works as a banquet waiter at a fancy restaurant in the evenings. Tyler created Fight Club and Project Mayhem and plans to blow up the Parker-Morris building for a legendary and triumphant suicide that will be remembered maybe not forever, but it'll at least be a big deal for a little while. Tyler wants to create something beautiful, even if it's for just a moment, even if it's the last thing he'll ever do.

To be more clear, Tyler and our narrator share the same body. This body never really sleeps. When our narrator believes he's asleep, Tyler is working overnight, assigning homework to Project Mayhem, and recruiting space monkeys.

Tyler finally emerges again and explains to our narrator, "I wouldn't be here in the first place if you didn't want me. I'll still live my life while you're asleep, but if you fuck with me, if you chain yourself to the bed at night or take big doses of sleeping pills, then we'll be enemies, and I'll get you for it."

In fear and panic, our narrator meets up with Marla. He tries to explain to her how he has a split personality and he needs her to keep him awake. He asks her to watch him and to document what he does when he's asleep, because he's afraid he'll start to go to bed earlier every night and sleep later every morning until he's no longer himself at all, but entirely Tyler Durden. If Tyler takes over, he may never wake back up again, and Tyler will cause something terrible to happen. But, Marla doesn't know that he is not Tyler. She doesn't see him as two separate entities. He tries to explain the differences between him and Tyler to Marla, "I love everything about Tyler Durden. His courage, his smarts. His nerve. Tyler is funny and charming and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect him to change their world. Tyler is capable and free, and I am not." Not knowing whether or not to truly believe in what he's saying, Marla agrees to keep an eye on him if he ever falls asleep.

At this point, Tyler has killed our narrator's friend from the testicular support group, Bob, during one of Project Mayhem's homework assignments, Tyler has killed his boss by turning his computer monitor into a bomb... and our narrator is literally waking up to all of this tragedy and being told he's responsible.

I personally believe that Bob's death was a big moment for our narrator, and a symbol of friendship, hope, and what was once a solace for him: lost.

Finally entirely self-aware, our narrator tries to shut down Fight Club and Project Mayhem. Using his newfound authority as physically being Tyler Durden - the head of the operations, he tries to shut all the projects and homework down. But Tyler already prepared all the space monkeys for how to handle this kind of mutiny while our narrator was asleep.

2 hints: Rubber-band. Knife.

Mid-attack, our narrator blacks out and wakes up in his blown to bits apartment.

"The world is going crazy. My boss is dead. My home is gone. My job is gone. And I'm responsible for it all," are the thoughts going through our narrators head as he considers jumping from the fifteenth floor of his apartment complex. Feeling as though he has nothing left, he considers Marla, but can't believe she'd ever love him because he's not Tyler. He's not who she thinks he is. He decides he needs to talk to her. To further explain what's going on and protect her from anything that Tyler may have told Project Mayhem to do to her that he can't remember/doesn't know about. He and Marla meet up at the bowel cancer support group. During "hug time", Marla starts screaming about how she called the cops because she watched our narrator kill someone today. Our narrator tries to explain that it wasn't him, it was Tyler, and tells her that the cops probably wont come because they're in on Project Mayhem too. He's tries to explain that he's trying to save her because she saw Tyler Durden kill someone, and Tyler will come after anyone who threatens Project Mayhem. He explains that he can take care of Tyler, but she needs to watch out for members of Project Mayhem. And Marla asks why she should believe any of this. That's when our narrator realizes for the first time and admits out loud, "because I like you."

It's then that our narrator realizes if Tyler loves Marla then he loves Marla. The moment he met Marla, he needed a way to be with her, so he created Tyler to be someone she'd want to be with. Marla was the catalyst - the spark that lit the wildfire.

He goes to the nearest Fight Club and signs up to fight everyone there. The fights go on as long as they have to. He's crying because, "Everything you ever love will reject you or die. Everything you create will be thrown away. Everything you're proud of will end up as trash." And it's after his face is split from his nose to his ear, and after he's bitten off half of his tongue that he decides he wants to die, "because only in death do we have names. Only in death are we no longer a part of Project Mayhem."

Our narrator wakes up in his bed. The house is cleared out. All the space monkeys have relocated. Tyler is yelling at him to, "get up. The last thing we have to do is your martyrdom thing. Your big death thing." Our narrator states he's had enough and begs Tyler to just kill him now, but Tyler insists on giving him, "a real opera of a death," and threatens to hurt Marla if he doesn't cooperate - to which he complies.

The only thing that makes our narrator hesitate as he's standing on the roof of the Parker-Morris building with a gun in his in his mouth - just in case the building doesn't blow up before the police helicopters arrive - is Marla running across the roof of the building with all of the support group members begging him to, "wait!" And telling him he doesn't need to do this. When Marla enters, Tyler's gone. Because Tyler and Marla are never in the same room together. He tries to explain, "I'm not killing myself, I'm killing Tyler." He waits but the bomb never goes off. Tyler mixed the wrong components to make nitroglycerin and the building doesn't explode, but he hears the helicopters coming and he knows everything's gone too far to quit now. He knows this is the only way to get rid of Tyler.

He pulls the trigger.

He pretends when he pulled the trigger that he died. But he missed and destroyed the other side of his face, leaving him with a large scar on either side of his mouth to both of his ears. He's admitted into a mental hospital that he refers to as Heaven. He says Marla still writes him from Earth and says that they'll bring him back soon, but he's not ready. He's not ready because every once in a while he still sees someone with a black eye or swollen forehead who will whisper, "We miss you Mr. Durden," or "everything is going according to plan," or "we're going to break up civilization so we can make something better out of this world," or "we look forward to getting you back."

CONTRASTS:

Our narrator meets Tyler Durden in an entirely different way in the book than he does in the film. In the film, Tyler (played by Brad Pitt) is a traveling soap salesman that our narrator runs into on one of his many business trips. I believe the book's introduction to Tyler's character speaks wonders over just happening to run into him on a plane with a briefcase full of soap. The scene on the beach serves as an illustration of how opposite Tyler and our narrator are, and how fascinated by that he is. That being said, I also understand that a scene like the one on the beach wouldn't read as well or feel as realistic on screen.

In the movie, after realizing his apartment has been blown apart, our narrator calls Marla at first, but then decides against the idea and hangs up, before then calling Tyler. I originally believed this was the beginning of Hollywood putting their dirty hands all over a perfectly good story. I believed this was Hollywood adding romance that wasn't present in the novel for the sole purpose of reaching a female audience (under the false pretense that women are only interested in romance). But, Marla's character is far more important in the film and book than I originally perceived, because without Marla, there would be no Tyler.

Fincher's perspective of the book as portrayed on film feels more like a dark love story between our narrator and Marla than how I initially perceived Palahniuck's story. I believed the intended romance was between our narrator and Tyler. Not in a gay or sexual way (not that there's anything wrong with that at all. I could probably get into some Bradward NorPitt). I believe this is a story about identity and falling in love with one's self, liberating one's self, and - despite everyone else - seizing the moment and dying a legend for one's self. I perceived the romance as one between who our narrator is and who he wants to be. Fincher's interpretation does better at emphasizing Marla's position in this dark love triangle from the beginning and throughout the extent the story, whereas in the book, you're not quite sure what value her presence holds until the end when our narrator realizes he cares for her and literally created Tyler to be with her.

In the film, our narrator fights the transition from being someone he hates (himself) and becoming someone he admires (Tyler) so much more than he ever did in the book. Our narrator willingly followed Tyler around and admired his every movement, right down to the day Tyler told him it's time to kill himself.

Edward Norton puts up a big fight to not blow up the building in the film's climax. Instead of the Parker-Morris building in the book, Tyler wants to blow up multiple credit card companies because by destroying the credit card companies, he can erase all debt, and that way the whole world could hit bottom with him. This particular choice may make Tyler Durden seem like a fascist cult leader to some. Though, I can see how Tyler (unintentionally) becomes a dictator through his role in Project Mayhem, I do not at all agree with the perspective that Tyler Durden intentionally became a manipulative, fascist, cult leader driven by power, masculinity, and the fear of becoming a woman/the least bit feminine. I think Fincher's interpretation may have eluded to the story being more political than how I personally interpreted the book, because my perception of the book is far more about emotion, mental illness, and the struggle to find happiness in a consumerist society.

In case you're thinking, "What the fuck is she talking about cults and fascism for?" or "Well, yeah, Tyler Durden is a cult leader. That's how I interpreted it too", and you're at all interested in more of that noise, here's a video.

I just personally did not perceive it that way at all.

The Tyler that you come to know in the book is very anti-government, falling more in line with the definition of a nihilist. In the book, everything that's done feels driven by unadulterated emotional and personal gain. As stated previously, I interpreted this as a story about identity. I didn't see this story as a political statement of any kind - other than how consumerism contributes to our narrators monotonous life style, leading to his depression and unease. If you do want to take the fascist approach then I guess you could say that Tyler became exactly what he hated. Something I think we have all been victims of at one point or another.

That being said, I did create a poll on Twitter, and only 17% of voters believe Tyler Durden to be a Fascist. So, I'm gonna go with my interpretation: The nihilist/anarchist driven by the concept of living in the moment, in complete freedom from law, objects, or the concept of perfection.

Lastly, I do wanna give the movie praise where praise is due. David Fincher did an excellent job at casting, sticking to the dialogue in the book, and - for the most part - the plot progression. I also loved his choices with the cinematography, like splicing Tyler in and out of the shot in the exact way Tyler (as a character) splices porn into children's movies when he's working as a projectionist. So quick, you almost don't notice it. It's not only a reference to the character, but I felt it reflected Tyler's unknown presence with the narrator at all times. I also enjoyed the shakiness of the camera when Edward Norton's character starts becoming more and more unhinged. The way Norton's character broke the fourth wall and addressed the audience kept the film fun and moving at a fast and constant pace. Something that read better on screen than it did in the book was schizophrenia. Having two actors is far more believable and misleading to the schizo-plot twist. Also, the choice to actually blow up the building at the end of the film with Marla and our narrator still inside was a beautiful cinematic wrap up. Cinematic poetry at it's finest. A movie with the same ending as the book would have felt boring. But if the book had ended in the way the movie did, it would have felt rushed and/or incomplete.

Just as my friend described, the book and film are perfect as two separate entities.

How far will a person go to escape the monotony of their perfect, content, and complete life? To find love? To find someone to listen - truly listen? How far will you go before you accept yourself? Will you wait until it's too late?

Rated a 4/5 because the book is just better. If you consider yourself a Fight Club fan, make sure you've watched the movie AND read the book.

Don't be a poser. x