Fight Club
"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time."
David Fincher brings us Fight Club (1999), which stars Edward Norton and Brad Pitt. Edward Norton plays the narrator, who works as a product recall specialist for a car company. Because of the stress of his job, he begins to suffer from recurring insomnia.The narrator then meets Tyler Durden and both men find that they enjoy fighting so they move in together and establish a "fight club", drawing numerous men with similar desires and put on fighting matches. (Spoiler!) Towards the end of the movie, Norton figures out that he really is "Tyler Durden" and the Tyler that he has been seeing is really a hallucination. He was suffering from multiple personality disorder.
Trailer for Fight Club:
https://www.youtube.com/watchv=J8FRBYOFu2w
When this film was first released, apparently it "failed" at the box office. This movie is somewhat hard to follow and may be almost disturbing at some points.
I chose the focus on the opening scene of the film. The movie starts with all the focus on the narrator. As we meet Jack we have little information as to what is happening or who Tyler is, or why he would be holding a gun in Jack's mouth. Regardless, this type of opening grabs our attention and instantly invests us in what is happening because we want to understand what we are seeing.
The scene where Jack flips through the pages of the magazine in his apartment, the pages come alive and pieces of furniture appear around him, complete with price tags. The visual effects in this scene are unreal. The visual effects sequence places Jack inside the advertisements themselves. He is trying to live a life that he has seen in advertising.
Jack's voice-over throughout the film, especially in the beginning of the film, really helps to inform and keep the viewer focused. "Without the voice-over," Fincher stated, "the film would be far more depressing and disturbing to watch.
I loved your analysis of the advertisement scene which I love, and also acknowledging the movie's use of narration, but maybe next time talk more about the overall themes or general things that you liked or disliked about the movie.
ReplyDeleteGood job, but it kind of feels like you're just getting started. What else is intriguing about this movie? What do you think about the camerawork and all of that? For the next one, keep going with the details.
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