20 Things You Didn't Know About Fight Club
1. Where Is My Mind?
Fincher walks us through the Tyler Durden reveal like children - yet editor Jim Haygood reminds us that “David’s thing is ‘You’ve got to assume that people are smart—you want them in on it’.”
This is the guy behind The Game, a thriller about what’s real and what’s not, but Fight Club, a film about dissociation, is far, far smarter than The Game. Fincher leaves this finish open, after all. The bomb in the van has been reset: this isn’t a fairytale ending. That and Fincher’s final subliminal c*ck-shot suggest that Mister Toxic Masculinity is about to have the last laugh.
So Marla is potentially as much a figment as Tyler. What else is there that we haven’t been spoonfed?
Well, logically, if the house at Paper Street is all in Jack’s head then so is Project Mayhem - how can they occupy a house that doesn’t exist?
Jack spends a long time ‘asleep’ (ie, with Tyler in charge) while convalescing from his head injury - we know this because the wound on his forehead is completely healed when he comes downstairs to find the ‘house’ being used as a paramilitary base. If the ‘house’ is in his head, then now his brain is rammed with potential new personalities, nameless and identically dressed.
The house had become a living thing, wet inside from so many people sweating and breathing. So many people moving, the house moved. Planet Tyler. I had to hug the walls. Trapped inside this clockwork of space monkeys...