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Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller

Director: David Fincher

Writing Credits: Chuck Palahniuk (Novel) Jim Uhls (Screenplay)

The Narrator (Norton) works for Federated Motor Corporation as a recall coordinator.  He goes on the sites of car accidents, and writes up a file on the people involved in car crashes as statistics in his reports.  Insomnia torments him and in his sleepless life, he feels like nothing is real anymore, like “everything is a copy of a copy of a copy”.  His only escape is making his apartment the ‘perfect condo’, buying all the newest furniture on the Ikea catalogue because he believes that what he possesses defines him as a person.

Under the advice of a doctor friend, he starts going to self-help groups, to see what real pain is: Tuberculosis, Blood Parasites, Brain Parasites, Bowel Cancer, and Debtors Anonymous.  And when he begins to let his anger out and starts crying with all the others screaming for help, he finds freedom, the freedom of “loosing all hopes”.  But at Testicular Cancer, he realises he’s not the only ‘tourist’ - Marla Singer, the “Big Tourist” (Bonham Carter), goes to all the meetings, too. He sees his own lie reflected in her lie, and he can’t cry and, therefore, sleep again.

Then on one of the many flights he takes travelling across the country for work he meets Tyler Durden (Pitt), a handsome, way too witty, and confident guy who approaches him with a conversation on plane crashes – by accident, one of The Narrator’s many obsessions.

Back home, the protagonist finds that his condo, with all his beloved possessions, has blown up. The only thing left is a piece of paper with Marla Singer’s telephone number. But instead of calling her, he calls Tyler.  They have swapped briefcases by mistake, and he finds Tyler’s business card in it.

They meet in a bar and The Narrator, seeping a beer, gets the first hint of Tyler’s philosophy of life.  When The Narrator complains about having lost everything, his weird new friend says, “The things you own end up owing you”.  Later outside the bar, out of the blue, Tyler asks The Narrator to hit him as hard as he can and then harder.  After the initial resistance to this absurd request, our hero starts fighting.

He goes to live in Durden’s dilapidated house in Paper Street, in a toxic waste part of town – his home or a squat? –, and goes fighting every Saturday night outside the same bar.  Very soon, other men join them.  Fight Club is born.  “The first rule of Fight Club”, Tyler declares, “is that you do not talk about Fight Club, and the second rule of Fight Club is: “you do not talk about Fight Club”!  Tyler has other plans that come to light as the story unfolds...

Fight Club is not a masterpiece.  Its subject is so obvious – another piece on alienation in our consumerist society – but it unrolls with extraordinary originality.  Every single dialogue and monologue is challenging and provocative.  The characters are personifications and, at the same time, parodies of the side effects of our life style. Sometimes the criticism is so sharp that you might think the film is a hymn to some sort of anarchical revolution.

And then, there’s Marla Singer: brilliantly played by Helena Bonham Carter, she is an anti-heroin who brings to mind the lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne: “You can spend the night beside her / And you know that she’s half crazy / But that’s why you want to be there / … She is wearing rags and feathers / From Salvation Army counters / … And she shows you where to look / Among the garbage and the flowers…”. An “infectious human being”, it’s what Marla calls herself, living off what others throw away, dismiss or simply leave behind – a lunch box, a bridesmaid dress (loved for a day and then forgotten forever), the sexual drive of a man who doesn’t even recognise her (and himself, as a matter of fact) after making love. Marla is a ‘tourist’ because she doesn’t want to belong to the reality she only slides on; she is and wants to be at the margins, watching the picture in disgust, with dismay, but with love too.  Exactly like us.

Reviewed by Claudia Sandroni, Premier Movie Reviews 2006

• Some of the fake names used by The Narrator in the self help groups are names of characters in Planet of the Apes (1969), as well as classic roles played by Robert De Niro.

• The term 'Paper Street' refers to a road or street that has been planned by city engineers but has yet to be constructed.  A paper street is sometimes published in common street directories by accident, but does not yet exist.

• After the copyright warning, there is another warning on the DVD. This warning is from Tyler Durden, and is only there for a second. "If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this is useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? … Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think everything you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told you should want? Get out of your apartment… Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned.......Tyler"

Fight Club Poster
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Edward Norton

Brad Pitt

Helena Bonham Carter

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