Katie Mitchell

How does understanding more about David Fincher as a filmmaker aid your appreciation of the film “Fight Club”?

Fight Club is a David Fincher film which, although was not as successful as planned at the box office, gained a cult status following from its DVD release leading to it becoming one of the most iconic films of the past 15 years. David Fincher is an auteur known for his less mainstream and risky approach to film who has been both praised on heavily criticised on his route to his recognisable success.

Without an understanding of the detail and care Fincher adds into his films, it is difficult to appreciate his many films, including Fight Club. For example: David Fincher is known for his emphasis on impressive title sequences. When viewing Fight Club for the first time, its opening it not completely understood and therefore does not gain the appreciation it deserves. Not only does it represent the narrator’s mental issues which are revealed later in the film, it is also incredibly accurate and Fincher found this sequence so important to the film that it had an entirely separate budget to the film itself. The title sequence is a 90 second effects composition that depicts the inside of the narrators brain at a microscopic level starting from his fear centre and following the thought process initiated by the fear impulse. Directed partly by Fincher, this shows the integrity he wishes to give the characters within his films and the standard of depth he wishes to achieve. This title sequence could have been made cheaply and inaccurately yet he refused to let this happen, giving a high quality to his work as an auteur. To keep his trademark style within this incredible opening sequence, Fincher has described how while he wanted the brain passage to look like electron microscope photography, that look had to be coupled with the feel of a “night drive – wet, scary and with a low depth of field” which gave the overall sequence Finchers trademark dark style.

Throughout his films, Fincher uses an array of cinematography techniques to create a fluent, trademark, atmospherically style. His visual style is typically unique and flashy and Fight Club has been deemed by those who understand Fincher as a filmmaker, a masterpiece example of this. With knowledge of Finchers other films, a viewer is able to appreciate the commonly used filters to create meaning. In “The Social Network” Fincher used a blue colour temperature throughout which is also noticeable within “Fight Club.” This filter changes from blues to green to create the atmosphere Fincher wishes his audience to be a part of at specific moments in the film. This detail not only draws in the viewer further but is a strong part of the mise en scene when understanding the films story. For example: Fincher hired Jeff Croenewth as cinematographer and worked with him to apply a lurid style, choosing to make people “sort of shiny”. Fincher emphasised how the appearance of the narrators scenes without Tyler Durden were bland a realistic whereas the overall sense of the scenes with Tyler in them are more “hyper real in a torn down, deconstructed sense – a visual metaphor for what he is heading into”. To further emphasise this Fincher determined that heavily desaturated colours would be used in the costuming, make up and art direction. It is clear that Fincher is constantly thinking of the best way to portray his characters and their storyline to his audience as he designed every shot with purpose and cut with a meaning. With an understanding of this, I as a viewer have far more appreciation of David Fincher as a film maker.

Although Fincher has a reputation as a human hater through his tendency to create films about horrible people doing horrible things, he has another surprising tradition of featuring a

Katie Mitchell

strong female character that generally suits forms of feminism. In fact on feminist review sites such as “FemPop” he is largely praised for the women and actresses he includes and portrays throughout his films. For example: The main hero in “Panic Room” is a female who fights off three murderers within her own home to save her daughter and even her ex-husband. This empowering representation of women within Hollywood film is unfortunately very rare and for a film maker to challenge this, is a strong unique move appreciated by many females. Within Fight Club, Fincher includes his strongest contrast to the sexism females face within film by casting Helena Boham Carter as the only female character Marla Singer. Marla challenges every typical female convention that a Hollywood film would normally stick by. Her hair is messy as are her clothes and despite the knowledge that she has sex many times within the film, she does not become a sexual object. Even when the film covers her depression at the beginning of the film, it does not pity her in the typical format which a film normally would. Instead from this point her character grows into a strong, weird and confident female figure whose identity is based entirely around her pride of her madness and individuality. As the only female within the film, she takes on the representation of the entire gender. Finchers choice to include the scene where Marla joins the prostate cancer support group instantly introduces her as an edgy character and this scene heavily represents the questions she raises about female/male stereotypes. With all this is mind and Finchers reputation to challenging the awful sexist values women are typically given in film, as a female viewer I now appreciate his casting choices and film styles far more than before and rather than seeing Marla Singer as an annoying, moody character I instead see her as a strong, care free example of what women really are.

Overall, with the knowledge of the techniques which Fincher has applied to his film, an audience has a far greater appreciation of the detail and messages within Fight Club. This knowledge allows the film to evolve into something even greater than it was before and the skill David Fincher has applied to the film makes an audience understand its further narrative qualities which would otherwise have gone unnoticed.

Article I discuss in essay:

http://www.fempop.com/2011/12/28/the-women-of-david-finchers-filmography/