Even considering the complicated format of the book, David Fincher managed to almost perfectly illustrate the novel Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk, in his movie of the same name. Although tempting to compare a book and its film counterpart on even grounds, as a substitute of one another, the tools used to create each one differ greatly and thus should be evaluated on a thematic level.
While the reading audience has the chance to reread, and absorb the themes in layers, the other audience is seeing the piece as a whole, where the director has only a split second to have the same effect as the author had possibly made in multiple descriptive paragraphs. David Fincher, the director of the film Fight Club, which was released in 1999 and nominated for an Oscar in 2000, was working with a very recent novel, written by Chuck Palahniuk in 1995.
The audience, which was mostly North American, was relatively similar for both pieces – partially desensitized to violence through Hollywood movies and the media, over stimulated by the overwhelming stream of information available over the internet and materialistic due to the booming economy. The director therefore only had to consider the restrictions of the visual aspect of the film and the film-going demographic. Fincher chose to follow the book almost as a script, and allowed the author to be involved in the process, however Palahniuk was mesmerized by the work of the director and chose to have very little say in the process.
The flow and style of the plot line is almost identical, with a few scenes shortened to adhere to an acceptable two hours and many of the characters in the movie are a mirror reflection of their respective descriptions in the novel. The dialogue is adopted as a script and the only three major differences between the two stories are the narrator’s initial meeting of Tyler Durden, his final separation with Tyler Durden, and the concluding scene. The similarities between the storylines are extensive.
The inconsistent, abrupt, anecdotal snapshot rhythm of the book is mirrored in the film as extremely short cuts of the same scene, seen from different angles. The novel is also a recollection of past events recounted in first person, meaning the style of the simple language and chaotic wavering of the narrator’s mood reflect his personal view of the world. The director chose to mimic this effect by keeping a lot of the voice over narration in the film and changing the colour scheme of the events to match the narrator’s mood; A blue, cold colour scheme to reflect the narrator’s reality and warm tones when his alter-ego Tyler Durden is present.
Fincher also replicated many of the scenes from the book. The first time the reader is introduced to fight club, it is described as “Fight club is in the basement of a bar… Tyler gets under the one light in the middle of the black concrete basement and he can see that light flickering back out of the dark in a hundred pairs of eyes. ” (Palaniuk 50) The director recreated the image having a top-view camera angle on the main characters going downstairs into the bar basement, perhaps associating the activity with hell, and filming the fight scene in a very poorly lit, grungy open space.
Fincher also used very subtle mise-en-scene elements throughout the film, such as the graffiti art on buildings repeating the word “MYSELF” multiple times, and a shot of pure ecstasy on the fighters’ faces when they yell “Stop! ” to end the fight reflecting the narrator’s words: “You aren’t alive anywhere like you’re alive at fight club… and when you wake up Sunday afternoon you feel saved. ” (51). Marla, one of the main characters in the novel, is described as having “… hort matte black hair, big eyes the way they are in Japanese animation… ” (18) and is exactly that as portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter in the film. Tyler Durden, described as “… perfectly handsom and an angel in his everything-blond way” (202) is also nothing less of that as interpreted by Brad Pitt. Many of the characters do not have any descriptions at all however, except small details, such as a cornflower blue coloured tie on the narrator’s boss, but those are all very closely reflected in the movie.
Fincher used most of the exact dialogue from the book and accentuated it with mise-en-scene elements such as imitating the IKEA catalogue labels appearing over the furniture when the narrator describes his apartment and the narrator first rejecting Tyler’s offer of a smoke saying that “he doesn’t smoke” and later, as the narrator begins to merge the two personalities, he is seen smoking. The director chose to change three major events in the novel when adopting the text to film. The first being the narrator’s initial meeting with his split personality – Tyler Durden.
In the book, the narrator meets him at a nude beach. “This was the very end of summer, and I was asleep. Tyler was naked and sweating, gritty with sand, his hair wet and stringy, hanging in his face. ” (32) In the movie however, the characters meet in the airplane, in very common circumstances for the narrator. This choice could not have been made due to the motion picture rating system since the director didn’t choose to omit any of the violent or sexual scenes, so it was most likely done in the process of simplification of the text.
The novel has a tendency to skip in time to different episodes and locations of the narrator’s life, however the same effect in film is much harder to replicate partly because the viewer does not have the choice to go back and review what had happened previously. The final separation between the narrator and his wild, second personality is a lengthy and violent combat in the film which is made especially emotionally intense because the viewer sees the fight happen through security cameras, where it is obvious that Tyler Durden does not exist. The book however has a calm separation. Tyler and me at the edge of the roof, the gun in my mouth, I’m wondering how clean this gun is… Marla’s coming toward me, just me because Tyler’s gone. Poof. … And now I’m just one man holding a gun in my mouth” (204) The emotional build up is there in the novel because the reader senses that the narrator will commit suicide to get rid of Tyler, however that notion is not present in the film. The director, knowing that an ultimate fight scene, between a man and himself, would be a very strong attraction to the general public and uses this opportunity to invest in many sound and visual effects.
The ending of the story is also very different in the two version of the story line. Where Palahniuk leaves the reader gasping for air, knowing that the narrator failed to blow up the building, but had successfully shot himself and is now found in an indeterminate state of consciousness where he is still hoping to go back to being Tyler Durden, the director chose to have the movie end with the narrator and Marla holding hands, looking over the exploding buildings. The two endings have neither the visual nor the concept in common.
The last chapter of the book has the narrator contemplating going back to his old self: “Someday, she says, they’ll bring me back. … But I don’t want to go back. Not yet. Just because. Because every once in a while, somebody brings me my lunch tray and my meds and he has a black eye or his forehead is swollen with stitches and he says: ‘We miss you Mr. Durden. ’” (208) In the movie, the narrator takes Marla’s hand and says: “You met me at a very strange time in my life”, leaving the viewers with the hope that he wants to change.
David Fincher followed the novel very closely and chose to mirror many of the themes of the novel. He did this by adopting the dialogue and by adding mise-en-scene elements to contribute towards them, such as the IKEA labelling contributing the consumerism theme found throughout the novel. However, Chuck Palahniuk concluded his social commentary by making the reader doubt that anyone is able to completely overcome what they are or what they had become after succumbing to his or her urges, and David Fincher left his viewer with a glimmer of hope.
