Review of Movie Adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club

Fight Club is a 1999 film version of the Chuck Palahniuk’s satirical novel, “Fight Club” starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. Written by Jim Uhls and directed by David Fincher, this movie illustrates the life of a white, young men narrating with hindsight, how he ended up at the top of a skyscraper with a gun in his mouth.

He used to work as an insurance consultant of a big automobile company in the United States. As much as it sounds as an interesting and important job, he was deeply depressed, unsatisfied and unhappy with his monotonous and cyclical life. He replaces his emotional necessities and lack of attention with IKEA furniture and material possessions. His permanent uneasiness triggered sleeping disorders and the feeling that “nothing is real, everything is far away, everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.” (Fincher, 1999)

He claims to be in pain and asks for pre-scripted medical supplies to sleep, but the doctor says that he should visit support groups for patients with terminal diseases and see what real pain is. The narrator became addicted to attend to therapy and ended up involved in all seven groups; One for each day of the week. The narrator met Bob the first time he attended to “Testicular cancer” support group. People had to find a partner to hug, and they both ended up together. After Bob’s testicles were removed, he developed women’s breasts because of the hormones. The narrator determines that there is where he fits, “Between those huge sweating tits,” (Fincher, 1999) and describes how something never felt so right.

He could sleep for a while until Marla Singer started attending to the same support groups as the narrator. He soon realized Marla is an imposter just like he is. She had no diseases at all, and he complains that, her lie reflected his own lie (Fincher, 1999). Because of her, the narrator felt inhibited to canalize his sadness and couldn’t cry anymore, so once again, he had insomnia storming his nights.

On the same days, he had lots of business trips, but he was more confused and misplaced than ever. The narrator falls asleep and wakes up in a different place every time, never knowing where he is. Lose an hour, gain an hour, the narrator says it’s his life, and it’s ending one minute at a time (Fincher, 1999). He was so tired of living that he wished for the plane to crash while take-off or landing. During one of his flights, he met Tyler Durden, a soap salesman who also works as a movie projectionist and a waiter. He has a particular way of interpreting life and the narrator wishes he could be someone as carefree as Tyler.

When he finally stopped travelling and goes home, not only he had lost his suitcase with everything he liked to carry, but also he finds out that a gas leakage set his apartment on fire, and he has nothing left but ashes on the ground next to the building. The narrator finds the presentation card Tyler gave him on the plane and called him looking for help and a friendly voice. They meet up at a bar and reflect on what just happened. Once they finish talking, after a couple of beers, they leave by the back door and agreed he will stay at Tyler’s house. While they still talking, they start a spontaneous fight at the alley.

Their casual fights suddenly turned into a habit. Men got more interested in them each time they fought, and quickly, many started to join them. When they least expected, their little routine became an organised group of men ready to confront each other every single night. Fight club.

If you make a little research about the movie, you notice that everybody classifies it on a different genre. You may find options such as an action film, a psychological thriller, dark comedy and drama, but never a satire. Even though the novel is considered one, we won’t see people referring to the movie as a satire, and I couldn’t agree less. Both, the writer and the director were trying to capture multiple aspects from contemporary society to point out it shortcomings. A satire is considered a piece of writing which makes fun of an individual or a society to expose its flaws (Satire, Cambridge Dictionary), so by definition the movie could perfectly be considered one.

To the naked eye, it looks like the film has a straightforward plot, but in fact it is much more complex than that. The movie is highly symbolical and touches numerous controversial topics criticizing society and judging people’s priorities on these last centuries. It is hard to explain and identify all the analogies included, but based on the summary written above, it is possible to describe the most essential ones.

You may have noticed that we always refer to the narrator as “he”, and you may wonder why don’t we call him by his name instead. The truth is, the writer nor the film director ever revealed or assigned a real name to the character. The purpose of it was for the readers or the viewers to identify him as an average person and easily relate to him. They wanted for any of us to fit under the role of the narrator and connect even more with the story. However, for editorial, from now on I will call him Ted sometimes. (No particular reason for the name.)

One of the first symbols or comparisons we noticed at the beginning of the film is Ted’s identity crisis. He no longer has aims to live and rather flip to catalogues and wonder what kind of dining set define him as a person (Fincher, 1999). On the movie, they never strictly explain why Ted felt the way he did, but we may assume that’s also on purpose. Nowadays, people in society feel extremely empty and lonely without really knowing why. It’s a generalized symptom most of the times.

Once he started visiting support groups regularly, his anxiety got better for a while. Being there and listen to people’s life testimonies helped him cry away his sorrows and finally sleep at night. Watch people nearly dying, on a daily basis, made him feel better about his own life. This reveals the common necessity of humans for being accepted by others, feeling that we belong somewhere special and being valued. That’s exactly what gave him new desires to live.

We may also see how Ted finds huge comfort on Bob’s hugs. In this scene, he’s representing a maternal and paternal figure at the same time. This may be for two reasons. The first one might be that the narrator has no one to hold since he has no family and Bob may represent the role models missing at home while Ted was growing up. The second one could be to attack the stereotypes of masculinity and male figure presented by society. As grotesque as it may sound, we’ve always heard that “big balls” are what define real men. Males at the support group don’t have testicles any more, and they continuously repeat to themselves that they are still men (Fincher, 1999) no matter how much society states the opposite.

One of the most iconic characters definitely would be Marla. Since the first time we see her in the movie, she’s presented to us like the antagonist of the story Ted is telling. He refers to Marla as “the big tourist” not because she’s foreign, but because she walks around life with no concerns. She represents and reflects the narrator’s remorse from lying to everybody. From the moment she appears, Ted’s voice and tone completely changes while narrating. He hates her so much because his self-consciousness and guilt came back to him in the form of Marla. She’s a reminder that anxiety is extremely real and that it will not simply fade away while being surrounded by people.

On the plane scene, during his business trips, Ted once again faces his identity crisis and wonders “If you wake up at a different time in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?” (Fincher, 1999). The narrator is tired of who he is but he does nothing to change the miserable life he thinks he has. In the same scene, it’s also possible to identify individualism as a major problem on today’s societies. Everywhere he went, he found “Single-serving sugar, single-serving cream, single pat of butter. The microwave Cordon bleu hobby kit. Shampoo-conditioner combos, sample-packaged mouthwash, tiny bars of soap” (Fincher, 1999). He would even refer to the people he met on each flight as single-serving friends. This shows how now things are meant to be disposable. Their only purpose is to cover a one time necessity and then forget about them. When he refers to another person as single-serving friend, we can see how the concept also applies to people. Currently, we are only looking for our own well being without thinking on the consequences. We want success only for ourselves and we only call upon people when we need something from them. Later on, we get rid of them.

Ted has had many “single-serving” friends, but once he met Tyler, he became the most interesting of them all. It might be the first time the narrator officially meets Tyler, but, haven’t you noticed? Unlike Ted, this not the first time we see him. From the beginning of the movie, the director has slowly introduced him to us through multiple scenes. His presence became more visible and explicit a few scenes before they both met, but David Fincher wanted to play with our subconscious mind and show us that he has always been there. In fact, a couple of scenes ahead, when the narrator explains the many things Tyler did to live, they reveal an important secret. Tyler inserts inappropriate images on children movies, the same way the director inserted an image of Tyler, for a fraction of a second, from time to time. We didn’t know we saw him, but he was always there.

Tyler Durden represent everything the narrator would ever want to be and never will unless he changes his mindset. Ted was always concerned about fitting with the social stereotypical standards of a perfect life, but since such a thing doesn’t exist, he was never completely satisfied. The moment he got home and realised he had nothing left, and everything he worked for had vanished, he called the only person that has ever offered him a different vision of life. Tyler.

When they meet to take a beer at the bar, the narrator describes everything he had and how he was about to be completed. Now that everything is gone, Tyler wants to show him how they are all consumers because of capitalism and how that lifestyle will never provide him real happiness. This is one of the most repetitive concepts through the whole movie; Consumerism. Throughout the story, both, the book and the film, there are some quotes Tyler mentioned while expressing his philosophy of life and trying to teach Ted a lesson:

“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.” (Palahniuk, 1996)

“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your - khakis.” (Fincher, 1999)

“We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.” (Palahniuk, 1996)

We cite these quotes with two purposes. The first one is to show the level of detachment Tyler Durden has. For him, possessions are nothing more but unnecessary material goods. He suggests to never be complete, stop being perfect and just evolve (Fincher, 1999). The second one is to make emphasis on the topic with more recurrence during the story. To understand the plot better and identify the main cause that led Ted to develop all kind of health disorders, we need to understand how immerse we all are on this vicious consumer conduct. Things we own end up owning us (Fincher, 1999) because we generate a huge dependence to furniture and goods. By saying that he had “everything” on that suitcase or he had it all on his apartment, he is also saying there is nothing more valuable than the possessions we have. Tyler proposes not only the narrator but also all the readers and viewers to “reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions” (Palahniuk, 1996). To actually define ourselves we need to pursue our dreams, our goals and hold tight on our principles and values, any other way, we will just be participants of the capitalist “circus.”

As the film goes on, we get the feeling that even though Ted has death desires; He doesn’t want to kill himself nor put an effort on living instead of just surviving. Once again, his thought could expose any of us. I’m not talking about suicidal wishes, I’m talking about conformism. People is complaining all the time about how their life sucks, yet, nobody does anything to change what they don’t like. We are usually waiting for a Tyler Durden to come in our behalf and rescue us from ourselves. It is important to understand that this is not how life works. We need to take responsibility of our own actions. Sometimes we might get help, but nobody is going to do the “dirty work” for us.

Finally, the last concept we’ll cover relies on the club itself. Fight Club is often seen or considered as the time two strangers get to oppose each other, but as everything else, we also need to analyse this carefully. Just like winning isn’t the main objective of the fight, the fight encounters aren’t the main theme of the movie either. The creation of the group is a way to wrap up all the symbols previously mentioned. Their fights aren’t a strength show off, or a matter of proud, they are a way to canalize and liberate the frustrations they have been holding for so long. A way to understand who the real enemy is. To be themselves for one night forgetting about all the social rules we have shown before. But just for one night, because once they go home and the sun rises, they go back to their “prison cells”. They are not a member of the club anymore. The same way we behave in real life when there is something affecting us deeply, they behave when they go to work the next morning. They just act as if nothing has ever happened.

We could keep writing symbolisms and controversial topics about the movie as much as we want. People will never stop finding new hidden messages that David Fincher left for us to find through the whole film, but if you point out every single detail that represents a satire while watching the movie, you may miss the amusement parts of the plot. The more you talk about it, the less impact it may have on people when they watch it the first time. Guess that’s why “the first rule of fight club is: you never talk about fight club.” (Fincher, 1999)