Fight Club (1999): A New Perspective

With movies, as with all art, there are at least three distinct versions. There is the movie meant, the movie made and the movie seen. The movie meant is the filmmaker's original intent before the movie is made, what he wants the movie to look like and represent. However, the next stage, the movie made, has a huge impact on how accurate the movie meant will be. During the movie made, executives, budget cuts, and technology all limit the extent to which the movie is changed. Finally, after the movie is released, it is the audience's turn to interpret the movie in any which way it wants, possibly destroying the original image that the filmmaker planned. No film can exemplify these phases as thoroughly as David Fincher's Fight Club.

As Tyler Durden said, "Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing." Fight Club as the movie has been mangled and twisted beyond belief to come out with the product which is regarded with acclaim today. It was never intended to be viewed as a stylistic presentation of sexy male violence which advertisers portrayed. Audiences were originally assaulted with images of sweaty Brad Pitt and brutal violence.

However, this notion is far from Fincher's original intent. He compared fight club meetings to Nuremburg Rallies, hoping to instill within the viewer the notion that under the apparent calm, there was something terribly wrong. Still, the audience got caught up in the marketing campaign that pushed Fight Club to the top of the box office. The audience became enthralled with the idea of project mayhem, and Tyler Durden's character. They became so caught up in project mayhem that they created their own fan-sites devoted to it and its ideals. In doing so, we see Fincher's intention played out.

The original members of fight club were normal people, everyday men caught up in the monotonous and unfair game of life. However, with project mayhem, they had a chance to start over, a chance to become a part of something greater than themselves. However, Fincher is trying to prove how these people can so easily get caught in something terrible, something that originally seems simple yet in a very short time span is completely devoted to complete anarchy. Many individuals who watched fight club fell so deeply into the film, that they wanted to be a part of project mayhem, that they themselves became a part of the wave.

Furthermore, this film asks viewers to take an alternate view of their lives. When we watch Fight Club, we are compelled to cheer on the anti-consumerist Starbucks smashing, and frown when the Narrator turns against Tyler's ultimate plan for project mayhem. However, in reality, we stop at Starbucks every day to work, and would watch the bombing of several buildings on the news with horror. How then can the audience relate to the narrator's position so well? The answer lies in the fact that the average American experiences the same life that the narrator does; we go through the motions until we have nothing more than a room filled with IKEA furniture.

Fincher's creation warps the mind in on itself as it realizes the full 360 it has caused you to experience. However, I feel that Fight Club truly opened my mind, and that of many other viewers, to "life". At one point, the narrator says, "After fighting, everything else in your life got the volume turned down." He means to say that the life we all know is a shallow and somewhat worthless existence. Nevertheless, to completely abandon it as the narrator unconsciously did is only an invitation to mayhem. Still, near the climax of the film, a question popped into my mind...Would I rather return to the dull monotony of life, or would I rather join in the fascist movement led by Tyler. Let's just say, "With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels," so it would be hard for you to understand.

Sources:
"Fight Club (1999)." IMDB. URL: (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/)