Fight Club Film Noir Essay

The term “film noir” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a type of crime film featuring cynical malevolent characters in a sleazy setting and an ominous atmosphere that is conveyed by shadowy photography and foreboding background music”. Starting in the mid-20th century, film noir was a type of film that focused on the bad more than the good, showing pessimistic, depressing stories with flawed, cynical characters. The newer films that exhibit film noir-type qualities are part of the neo-noir genre, which has the same idea in a new product. I chose the 1999 film Fight Club by David Fincher to analyze for religious meaning within the noir genre.

The film is about an unnamed narrator who feels like he has gone nowhere in life. Suffering from insomnia, he goes to a support group for cancer victims as a form of therapy. The narrator finds the support groups more and more helpful for his insomnia, and goes to them more often. Flying home from a business trip, he sits next to a soap salesman, Tyler Durden, who exhibits the complete opposite traits of the narrator: confident, casual, and unreserved. After they land, the narrator goes home to find that his house has been destroyed. He meets with Tyler at a local bar and …show more content…
When the narrator discovers that Durden has a plan to bomb bank towers holding credit debt records, he attempts to disarm the bombs. He is then captured by Durden who holds him at gunpoint. Tyler then explains the reasoning for all of this, ever since he met the Narrator on their flight. It is then revealed that Tyler Durden is a projection of the Narrator’s alter ego, and that the Narrator is the one who planned all of this. Realizing this, he knows that he has the gun he is being held at gunpoint with, and “kills” Tyler by shooting himself in the

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