Fight Club was originally a book written by Chuck Palahniuk, than later turned into a film with the same name, Fight Club (1999) directed by David Fincher. It is about an unnamed protagonist, an everyday man who is unhappy with his white-collar job, and therefore he forms a “fight club” with a soap sales man by the name of Tyler Durden. Tyler Durden is the alter-ego of the unnamed man, which means he is nonexistent. Tyler forms a relationship with a woman by the name of Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) the two meet in a support group for testicular cancer, Tyler than confronts Marla and addresses that she is a fake, and likewise Marla does the same. Marla phones the unknown man after an overdose, and gets rejected, but when she calls Tyler, he helps her out. The whole movie is filled with scenarios where a person can do either option one or option two. The scene that I am going to explain is when Edward Norton is sitting and staring into the barrel of a 9mm handgun.
This scene does not have an introduction due to the fact that this is the very first scene of the movie; all the audience knows about the film is that there is a guy sitting while a gun is lodged in his mouth. At 1:02 Edward Norton is facing dead into the barrel of a 9mm handgun where he is scared for his life. This director did an amazing job capturing the fear of Edward Norton perfectly. The sweat on his forehead, the bulging eyes, the black eye, and of course the gun perfectly centered in his mouth. The scene only has a gun and a face which expands across the whole screen to stress the importance of this scene because in the end of the film the scene will make sense.
The scene does not only capture a man with a gun in his mouth, but it captures the readers minds. What I mean by that is, this is an opening scene…most films can end with this but the director chose to make this the opening scene so that the viewer can think of a million different reasons why Edward Norton has a gun in his mouth.
After learning about Mis En Scene, I realized that the director has a very tough task when it comes to putting stuff in front of the camera. The gun that was chosen was a 9mm handgun; it’s a simple, easy to use gun that gets the job done. The black eye was a great addition because it may give the audience reasons to think that he got beat up by a person, and now that person is about to kill him. The way that the camera is focused is unique also, which is one of my most favorite thing that directors do; the focus was clearly on the gun and Edward where the background was not so much faded out, but blurry which tells the viewer to look at the stuff that is clear, the director is basically pointing to the gun with a sign that says “LOOK HERE!” and I love when directors do that and in these scene I think it was done greatly.
I think the scene was obviously a metaphor. Norton finally got confident enough to get rid of his "stronger" personality and that's the main reason why Tyler Durden died. It's not so much details; it's more so the fact of the thought that counts. In the end of the film, the audience realized that Edward Norton has a split personality by the name of Tyler Durden. He is struggling with keeping up with Tyler and his life is getting ruined day by day because Tyler is more of a “bad-ass” which allows Edward to punch people, hurt people, make them bleed, have sex with Marla, among many other things. The real Edward did not want to do any of these things so he finally gets sick of it and takes the gun and shoots himself in the mouth without killing himself; only damaging his cheek, which eliminates Tyler. The film ended with Tyler and Marla standing in the middle of the screen in a semi-long shot which symbolizes that Tyler is dead and Edward can live his life the way he wants to.
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