Fight Club

Rating: Null/10 (2 October 2012)

The narrator, who is played by Norton, is identified in the script as Jack but is left nameless in the film. He suffers from insomnia and is just missing something in his life, but he does not know what that something is. He can't sleep, can't think, basically a zombie. He goes to support groups for clarity on anything at all and it makes him happy. After a woman starts showing up to these support groups, he returns to his sad, insomniac ways. He drives himself so crazy his mind creates "Tyler," whom he starts a fight club with. He creates Tyler because that is the thing he is missing. He wants to be the person he created but just is not that person so he creates him in his mind, so only he can see and hear him.
Throughout the beginning of the movie, before Tyler is introduced, you see the a flash of a person just standing in random places for a split second. This is when the narrator is at his worst with his insomnia. The flash you see turns out to be Tyler. The narrator is so sleep deprived, he imagines these things that aren't actually there. When the narrator is on the plane and meets Tyler for the first time, it shows both characters' brief cases. They are identical. Also at work, the narrator's boss wears different colored ties on different days, and they are said to determine the day and mood of his boss.
There are so many scenes that are so significant in this film. However, each character has a scene that is so important to the entire film. For Marla, who is Tyler's/ the narrator's lover, her big scene is when she is introduced. She comes into the film with a bad reputation already, saying how she ruined the narrator's life. She appears to be the root of all that is evil in the film. Had she not have gone to the support groups, the narrator would still go to them to be happy and actually get sleep, which would lead to the narrator not having to create Tyler, then start fight club and eventually blow up half the city. She is the base for all that happens in the rest of the film. For the narrator and Tyler, I believe a big scene for them was when they first fight in the parking lot of the bar. It just went on to show how rapidly something like that grows because within the next month it was huge. For the narrator, his scene is after the scene in the bathroom with Tyler, when he is at work. He is talking with his boss and usually when he talks with him, he is polite and obeying, but this time was different. The narrator lashes out on him after his boss questions him about a paper that was on the copier. This is where you can tell the narrator is growing to be more and more like Tyler. He just stopped caring altogether. The big scene for Tyler was when he went over the rules of Fight Club. The first two rules are that you do not talk about Fight Club. Tyler stresses the importance of secrecy for the whole operation and you could tell this is where Tyler knew it was going to be big.
By seeing how the narrator creates Tyler, how he goes to support groups, him blowing up his own apartment, starting Fight Club, and eventually starting a cult-like group goes to show just how sad he really is. Even if they don't directly go out and say he is not happy, it shows throughout the movie that he is a sad, lonely, and quite frankly, a straight up crazy person. All of these instances are just a few from the movie, but there are plenty more that show he's insane. Starting a cult-like group does not occur this once for Norton's career. His character in "American History X" does almost the same thing.
As far as knowing the narrator was a little crazy, it was obvious to tell he was maybe just a little. You could say it he is a little strange because he wakes up in different places and does not remember how he got there, or because he goes to support groups just to help him sleep at night. But nothing to the extent of what it showed at the end. He creates this alter ego that in the end almost ends up killing him and succeeds in blowing up buildings and never realizes it was really him until Tyler tells him about it. I don't think anyone saw that coming, but you could definitely tell something a little weird was going on with the narrator.
The movie itself I feel would be difficult to create but the director nailed it. The scene where Tyler burns the narrator's hand with a chemical is where you can really see the power Tyler has and you can tell the narrator starts to get a little frightened of him and his intentions. Another is when you find out Tyler was really just in the narrator's head and they recap points in the movie where you thought Tyler was the person doing these things but it turns out it was really the narrator. That scene answered any questions of how they did it. Also throughout the movie it did a really great job at hiding but at the same time hinting Tyler was just a figment of the narrator's imagination. The only thing I would question about the movie is when the narrator meets Tyler in the airport and sees Tyler leave in a car he just stole. I personally do not see the importance of him stealing the car and I don't understand who actually stole the car.