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Walter Benjamin, in his essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" mentions some of the debates that accompanied film when it was first invented. What was its relationship to truth and reality? Is film primarily a visual copy of what really exists, or is like other art, and dependent on the intention of the film maker. The debate reminded of a classic Calvin and Hobbes strip.









Calvin understands that you can’t think of cameras as representing truth. Like photography, film was once thought to be a useful method of copying reality. Instead, the significance of film has come from applications beyond strict scientific reproduction.

Fight Club in particular is a film that does not present an unobstructed view of reality. The audience does not view the true experiences of the narrator (Edward Norton), but rather sees and feels what the narrator is feeling. The sometimes disjointed and disorienting editing captures the state of mind of the insomniac. The colors of the film themselves try to mimic Norton’s frame of mind. Drab and understated blues appear in scenes where Norton is at work - not really awake but not asleep either. The scenes with Brad Pitt are different, with reds and yellows. The blood and gore of the fight scenes are vivid and hyper-realistic.
Of course, the final revelation that Pitt and Norton are the same character throws into question all we have seen previously. The film flashes back to the earlier events, this time displaying an alternates version of events. Norton fights with himself in the parking lot. He is the one leading the fight clubs, directing the underground army. Even the second presentation of events cannot be taken as truth, since the reliability of the Norton’s narration has been questioned. We see the narrator attempt to put the pieces of the story back together, but the final product is still unsatisfactory.

Benjamin talks about slow motion and close ups, how they reveal things not noticeable to the naked eye. In one sense, you can think of this as revealing truth unknown at first. But slow motion and similar techniques can be thought of differently. Slow motion is a false perspective, an artificial reality that can help or hinder our understanding of the filmed object.
Movie special effects takes the principle further, creating artificial images, oftentimes from scratch without an original “real” object. In Fight Club, we see Norton’s fear normally (with the gun in his face at the beginning of the movie) - terror is visible in his eyes, sweat is on his face, etc. However the film actually begins with visually stunning sequence that begins within the very neurons in Norton’s brain. Presumably, we are seeing the actual thoughts themselves - fear, combined with the confusion about his dual identity. Of course, the sequence has little relation to physical reality. However, it is not different that the rest of the movie - we can’t really be sure of physical reality outside of Norton’s mind. In the beginning of the film, we see a version of how Norton’s apartment was destroyed. We follow a camera through computer-generated images of everyday household appliances, leading to the gas explosion. The images appear artificial, since they are only Norton’s mental reconstruction of the incident. Eventually, we learn that this reconstruction is false, part of a set of false memories that cover up the fact that Norton himself (as Tyler) destroyed his condo. Similarly, the most important dialogues in the film never actually happened. Norton’s conversations with Pitt - were they actual internal dialogues, or representations of internal conflicts that Norton’s character did not want to express.