The cinematic point of view of this film is mostly the indirect-subjective point of view. The director uses this point of view because it coincides with the main theme of the film: insanity. The main character Jack the Narrator, played by Edward Norton, is schizophrenic and has multiple personalities. The film starts at the ending of the movie and goes back in the main character’s memory about three years before the present moment in the film. The indirect-subjective point of view is used because it gets the viewer close to the action but does not allow them to take part in it. Once Norton’s character realizes that he has multiple personalities the director uses more objective points of views. For example, in the scene where Jack the Narrator realizes that the gun Tyler is holding is actually in his hand, you see the gun form his eyes. Throughout most of the move you would have seen it from someone looking over his shoulder.
In addition, the movie does have some director interpretive points of views. A good example of and interpretive point of view is the scene where Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt, is holding a gun to the head of a store clerk for the sake of doing so. The camera is at a low angle, which makes Tyler seem superior to the store clerk, which in fact he is because he has the store clerk’s life in his hands (Phillips 84). The angle that Tyler is shot at makes the scene more powerful than had it been shot from an eye-level view (Phillips 84).
Cinematic composition is important to Fight Club as it is to all movies. The methods the director uses to draw attention to the objects of greatest significance are extreme close-ups and arrangement of people. The director mostly used the extreme close-ups for inanimate objects and the arrangement of people for Jack the Narrator and Tyler. An example of an extreme close-up is used at the beginning of the movie when Edward Norton’s character starts to go to the meetings and there is a close-up of a Tuberculosis sign so that the viewer knows that he is at a meeting for Tuberculosis victims. Examples of arrangement of people are the fight scenes where the fighters are in the middle of everyone. This draws your attention to the fighters that everyone is looking at. In addition to arrangement of people is the scene with the store clerk. The store clerk is on the floor and his face is partially shown, Tyler’s body is the dominant figure on the screen and Norton’s character is in the background and is smaller to the other two people in the scene. This way of arrangement of people shows who the power sits with at that time. Edward Norton’s character is in the background looking around and one can see that he has no control of the situation at all. The store clerk’s face is partially shot so you can see his emotions, but know that he does not matter much because he is kneeling on the floor and is only partially seen. Also to create the illusion of three-dimensionality the director used change of focal planes. The director would often have the camera focused on an action in the background then he would change the focus of the camera to an object or person in the foreground. This shows movement from on person to the other with out moving the camera or the persons. This also shows a connection between two people or objects.
The editing of Fight club corresponds with the movies fast paced story line, so that there would not be a lot of dead screen time. This film was intended to be confusing at first, but to be unified as the movie came to a close. To do this the editor uses flashbacks to bring it all together at the end. An example of this is seen during the scene were Jack the Narrator begins to realize that both he and Tyler are in fact the same person. He begins to revisit many of the events that happened after he had met Tyler. He sees himself doing all the things that he had done as Tyler. The film at first is confusing, but the use of flashbacks does not throw off the speed of the film as it unifies the plot of the movie. Another technique the editor used was splicing. The editor did this toward the beginning of the film by having the image of Tyler pop up from time to time. The editor and the director did this to show how Jack the narrator was losing his mind. This showed that Jack was losing his mind, because we are remembering those events with him and the random pop ups of Tyler could have been the beginning of his split personalities. To make time shorter the editor used flash cuts as well as jump cuts to make longer scenes seem shorter. An example of a flash cut is the scene where Marla Singer play by Helena Bonham Carter and Tyler are having sex. There are a lot of quick, short shots, which make what would have been hours into a few seconds. The scene where Edward Norton’s character and Tyler are having their first fight and the editor cut to them sitting on a curb drinking a beer; that’s a good example of a jump cut the editor used to help the audience pay attention to something they may have missed the first time. This helps keep the viewers attention and not lose them.
This brilliant film was highly critically acclaimed; in fact, Andrew Manning of Radio Free Entertainment said, “Blistering and disturbing, fight club is a fast paced rush of adrenaline boasting amazing performances from both Pitt and Norton.” (radiofree.com) This film was a “fast passed adrenaline rush” because its cinematography never let there be dead screen time and its editor made the necessary cuts and jumps to keep the story flowing at a continuous rate. Fight Club was a fantastic display of skill in the fields of editing and cinematography to the point in which it was nominated for the Academy Award for Editing (yahoo.com). Not only does it keep the flow of the movie going but helps the viewer understand how the characters are feeling at a given time. The director also got to put his own impression on some of the most influential scenes in the film. With out cinematography and editing all moves would be unbelievably boring. At times scenes would be motion less and dole and at other times the emotion of a scene would be lost, because there isn’t good editing. This true is truly one of the most well done movies in the areas of cinematography and editing, since Citizen Kane, which is wildly considered one of the greatest movies ever made, came out in 1941 (Phillips 39).