“People are perverts. That’s the foundation of my career.” -David Fincher. Morbid curiosity is what keeps people from looking away from a car accident. It’s what makes us ponder natural disasters, fights, disfigurement, war, crime, and other macabre themes. Humans have an inherent inclination to be drawn to things that disgust, upset, and unsettle and Fincher knows this. He has made it the rock upon which he builds his works, diving head-first into worlds of mischief, murder, and mayhem. He has created a fruitful outlet for those who want to get lost in finally answered questions that everyone else was too afraid to ask. Fight club is no exception. It is the car accident, the hurricane, the street fight that we all can’t look away from.
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“Live every day like you’re dying” has never felt more like a daily prayer than in this movie. When the unnamed narrator, stricken with insomnia, seeks a doctor’s help, he is told that if he wants to see real pain then he should attend the support group for testicular cancer. The narrator takes this sarcastic suggestion seriously and joins the group. He doesn’t have testicular cancer but ends up finding that presenting an emotional charade every week helps him sleep again. Until he meets Marla. Marla is a meat grinder of psychological mishap. Through the course of the film, our thoughts about Marla change rapidly from scene to scene, which I will talk more about later. This is not unlike her psychological integrity, which is comparable to a Jackson Pollock painting. It is not until the end of the film and during a second viewing that an entirely new dynamic arises from between the lines of the dialog. The narrator sees a little too much of himself in Marla to be comfortable in her presence. She is the direct manifestation of the lies and hypocrisy that bring him to the support groups. As if not running into a woman that reminded him of himself wasn’t enough, he meets himself, literally. Tyler Durden is a renegade …show more content…
This means that he does not emulate someone being behind the camera reacting to what is happening in front of it; rather, the camera is moving freely and without character to provide the audience with a pure and raw interpretation of what is happening on screen. This is when the camera actually moves. More often than not, Fincher has the camera locked down on a tripod and set at a wide angle. He avoids unnecessary close-ups, and so when he does use them, they are much more effective. “Every time you go to a close up, the audience knows ‘look at this, this is important.’ You have to be very very cautious and careful about when you choose to do it.” -Fincher. In Fight Club there are multiple scenes in which the camera does nothing but pan side to side but it is blocked out so well, with actors entering and exiting, talking and walking, that we feel like we are actually in the room visually cataloging every important detail. As far as Fincher’s use of color goes, Fight Club’s collective overtone and visual style contrasts high key lighting with dark, harsh colors to complement the narrator’s schizophrenic nature. When the narrator is on his own, his surroundings are well lit and undersaturated, personifying his thoughts about corporate life. But every time he is with Tyler, the scene is dark, and the colors are saturated with a muddy palette much like
“Live every day like you’re dying” has never felt more like a daily prayer than in this movie. When the unnamed narrator, stricken with insomnia, seeks a doctor’s help, he is told that if he wants to see real pain then he should attend the support group for testicular cancer. The narrator takes this sarcastic suggestion seriously and joins the group. He doesn’t have testicular cancer but ends up finding that presenting an emotional charade every week helps him sleep again. Until he meets Marla. Marla is a meat grinder of psychological mishap. Through the course of the film, our thoughts about Marla change rapidly from scene to scene, which I will talk more about later. This is not unlike her psychological integrity, which is comparable to a Jackson Pollock painting. It is not until the end of the film and during a second viewing that an entirely new dynamic arises from between the lines of the dialog. The narrator sees a little too much of himself in Marla to be comfortable in her presence. She is the direct manifestation of the lies and hypocrisy that bring him to the support groups. As if not running into a woman that reminded him of himself wasn’t enough, he meets himself, literally. Tyler Durden is a renegade …show more content…
This means that he does not emulate someone being behind the camera reacting to what is happening in front of it; rather, the camera is moving freely and without character to provide the audience with a pure and raw interpretation of what is happening on screen. This is when the camera actually moves. More often than not, Fincher has the camera locked down on a tripod and set at a wide angle. He avoids unnecessary close-ups, and so when he does use them, they are much more effective. “Every time you go to a close up, the audience knows ‘look at this, this is important.’ You have to be very very cautious and careful about when you choose to do it.” -Fincher. In Fight Club there are multiple scenes in which the camera does nothing but pan side to side but it is blocked out so well, with actors entering and exiting, talking and walking, that we feel like we are actually in the room visually cataloging every important detail. As far as Fincher’s use of color goes, Fight Club’s collective overtone and visual style contrasts high key lighting with dark, harsh colors to complement the narrator’s schizophrenic nature. When the narrator is on his own, his surroundings are well lit and undersaturated, personifying his thoughts about corporate life. But every time he is with Tyler, the scene is dark, and the colors are saturated with a muddy palette much like