Waterford Films Club

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS
(I will refer to the character played by Jack Norton as "Jack" or "The Narrator" in this post)
Last night, while deciding on what movie to watch with a couple friends, I decided to use the indecision to my advantage and pulled out my handy list of movies which I was intending to watch. Fight club being the first one, I suggested it, and surprisingly everyone agreed. By serendipitous luck, Jono actually had it right there on DVD. Knowing so much about the film already, having studied aspects of it and the different themes the movie seemed to convey, I didn't expect to be as enraptured with the film as I was. Knowing the giant "twist" at the end did dampen the excitement for me, but it still shook me. But the story itself, though incredible on its own, is not what I am going to be focusing on today. Recently I've gained an interest in cinematography, and, by watching the film closely, I was able to make some observations on Fincher's style that I might not have noticed before. Now, I am by no means educated on this subject nor do I really have any idea what I'm talking about so I could just be spewing BS but these are just some thoughts I had.
The reason I was completely captivated by the film was because there was never a boring moment. Even when there was a "boring" moment, Fincher managed to direct it in such a way as you were still entertained. Simple scenes such as exposition and two people talking to each other are hard to make entertaining for an audience, but are included in almost every movie and, many times, are extremely important to the development of the story. Fimcher so seamlessly included exposition into scenes that you don't even notice that you've just gained an important piece of information. A great example of this is at the liposuction clinic. The scene is set up with only enough information to keep both you and Jack in the same position: with a hazy sense of what is going but in no way expecting to land yourself at a liposuction clinic. Tyler offhandedly states the fact that human fat is the best for soap making, not shoving it in your face, but in a quick little explanation to Jack. This gives the audience an important piece of information but doesn't do it in a boring way. Telling Jack, "We're going to the liposuction clinic because human fat is the best for making soap" at the beginning of the scene would just have been bad film-making;in the end the audience still knows the same amount of information either way, but there would be nothing interesting about the scene. There would be no emotion to the scene. The way Fincher gets the information across keeps the audience watching and also draws strong emotion from them. Confusion, surprise, then disgust are all packed into one scene. Fincher manages to compel the audience throughout the entire set up of the story in a way that makes the story much more entertaining.
He also manages to make boring scenes entertaining. Though it's easy to just film things straight on, it would just end up boring. Fincher puts an artistic spin on many of his shots that make the film unique. Using animation to dive into a trashcan at the beginning of the movie, or flipping the scene upside down by moving the camera through the floor gives the film an artistic quality that draws you in. I could go into much more depth with this but that would require me to rewatch to movie to find more examples, which I just don't have time to do now.
The last thing I want to touch on is the color correction of the film. There of course is the very basic observation of the light and dark contrast between the film. Light versus dark is a prevalent theme in the movie which represents the two sides of Jack/Tyler. Something that occurred to me as I was writing this section was that when Jack is by himself, in his apartment, at his office, everything is bright. Nothing really has too much color, but everything is crisp, clean. His whole office including his boss are plain and white and clean. When he begins to interact with Tyler however, a grainy and dark filter begins to take over. In every scene he is without Tyler, everything is white and bright; with Tyler, a greenish yellow tint takes over everything. This represents the ying-yang (symbolism with the table much) sides of The Narrator (I will refer to him as this when talking about his two sides as a whole). He has a dark side and a light side, one pristine, office cubicle, and ironed button up side, and another gross, cigarette smoking, blood stained and grimy side. The color contrast between these two sides reinforces the two sides of The Narrator and clues in the audience to the "twist" even before they realize it. Another aspect of the colors in the film is how the color progresses from beginning to end. (this ties directly into my previous point) In the film, The Narrator, addresses the fact that he begins to take on the personality of Tyler more and more as the film progresses. His own life begins to be completely taken over by Tyler, and he is more Tyler than Jack towards the end of the movie. At the beginning of film, Tyler doesn't exist. The colors are mostly bright, though the background may sometimes dim, the grimy filter is never applied until Tyler makes his full appearance. Everything is in full color, even at night. Then Tyler comes on the scene and the movie darkens. Though there are still scenes where Jack is alone and the color is bright again, the majority of the scenes become covered with that grimy yellow filter. And by the end of the film, in the last scene, it's almost completely black. The Narrator has completely descended into darkness and by committing a terrorist act, he has become completely the opposite of who he was at the beginning of the film. And though he does kill Tyler at the end, the damage has already been done. He never returns to the person he was at the beginning so the color is never pristine and bright again in the movie.
Now I've barely touched on the symbolism or themes in the film which is it's own entire can of worms. The film could really be interpreted so many different ways but I felt more like touching on the physical aspects of the film in this. But overall I thought it was a phenomenal film, I'm still shook by it, and it had some great lessons. Incredible storytelling with an original plot and great actors. I really appreciated the ending. It resolved the conflict in a clever way, and though it technically wasn't a happy ending, it was the happiest the ending could be for a film like that. 10/10 would watch 10 times.

Hello friends and welcome.
I created this blog because a couple of us have tossed around the idea of creating a film club at the school. Since many of us are extremely busy and organizing a club is a lot of work, I thought we could just start a "club." We will vote on a movie every week or every other week, then watch it (if you want, purely voluntary), and share our ideas. The blog is just a space where we can share our thoughts, theories, comments on the film for everybody to see in an organized space. You do not have to post but if you have something interesting to say it could start a great discussion. If able to, some of us could even coordinate the watching of said movies with programs such as "showgoers" which allows multiple people to watch a movie at the same time and comment on it. Some of the movies should be on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu etc, but if not a little pirating never hurt nobody (right?). This is a totally no pressure non committal activity so feel free to come and go as you please but if you are interested in a film, please vote! We all know what happened when half the population didn't vote on something.... bad things. I'll link some things, put up a list of suggested movies (the can be added to) soon, but share this with your friends if you think they'd be interested!

Waterford Films Club

Monday, February 20, 2017

Fight Club: Artistic Violence

Friday, February 10, 2017

Movie Suggestions

Welcome!