The Narrator In David Fincher's Fight Club

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Fight Club is tangible proof that movies don’t need to smash box office records or take home a multitude of awards to find a place in the public’s memory. Despite not doing exceptionally well at the box office or with the Academy, people still talk about Fight Club with unbridled affection. To test this, just ask someone what the first rule of Fight Club is. All this talk is not without founding, as Fight Club is a mostly entertaining film.
This David Fincher movie follows a man identified only as The Narrator (Edward Norton), a run-of-the-mill of office worker at a gigantic company who suffers from insomnia. The Narrator has become numb to the majority of pain and emotions (his job entails him inspecting automobile accidents), and this only
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Fincher hints at the twist in numerous ways. Tyler pops up for a split second at multiple moments during the movie, much like pornographic images appear during the family friendly movies Tyler splices together for one of his jobs. A subtler method of foreshadowing comes from Fincher’s blocking (the positioning of the actors). In one scene, The Narrator must go to the hospital to have his face stitched up. The Narrator, lying on a table, is in the foreground. Tyler, who feeds him lies to tell the doctor about how he sustained this injury, is in the background, obscured by shadow. As moviegoers who have seen Fight Club will know, this reveals something about Tyler and The Narrator’s …show more content…
The movie never seems quite sure about how serious it wants us to take it. For much of the film, Fincher creates a dark, but entertaining and funny air. As viewers, we become accustomed to this tone. The third act of the movie, however, seems to ask us to pull a 180 and take the movie totally seriously. The film seemed to waver between comedy and serious drama during some points prior to this, but now Fight Club wants us to fully commit to a total change. Even after two viewings, I still cannot discern how seriously Fincher wants us to take the movie. The anti-commercialism themes seem too anarchic to be taken seriously, but the tone of the movie seems to suggest otherwise in the last portion. As such, Fight Club seems unsure of itself and that is a significant detriment to the

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