Great Characters: Tyler Durden (“Fight Club”)

The movie’s budget more than doubled. Filming lasted 138 days and the director shot nearly three times the amount of footage as a normal movie. It underperformed at the box office. Its legacy led to the firing of a studio head. Yet Fight Club [screenplay by Jim Uhls, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk] is one of the most notable movies to be released in the last two decades. Interpreted by many as The Graduate for this generation, its most compelling character is Tyler Durden:

Here is the IMDB summary of the movie:

An office employee and a soap salesman build a global organization to help vent male aggression.

Durden [Brad Pitt] is a larger-than-life figure, one who captures the imagination of the story’s Protagonist, The Narrator [Edward Norton], a young man trapped in a meaningless life of humdrum work and valueless material goods. Then he meets Durden — and everything changes, yanking The Narrator out of his faux reality into the visceral and hard-fisted experience of Fight Club:

What is at the heart of the relationship between Durden and The Narrator? Sure, there are the homoerotic overtones and, of course, the Big Twist at the end, but what aspect of The Narrator’s psyche is being projected out into Durden’s character? Is it a defiant roar against the feminization of the male gender? Is it an embrace of the lizard brain? Is it a delusion, a spasm of wishful thinking when in reality masculinity is a lost cause? Or perhaps it’s simply a blast of existential truth about the blink of an eye we call ‘life’:

Narrator: [Tyler steers the car into the opposite lane and accelerates] What are you doing?

Tyler Durden: Guys, what would you wish you’d done before you died?

Ricky: Paint a self-portrait.

The Mechanic: Build a house.

Tyler Durden: [to Narrator] And you?

Narrator: I don’t know. Turn the wheel now, come on!

Tyler Durden: You have to know the answer to this question! If you died right now, how would you feel about your life?

Narrator: I don’t know, I wouldn’t feel anything good about my life, is that what you want to hear me say? Fine. Come on!

Tyler Durden: Not good enough.

At every turn, Durden tests The Narrator. An ally, then enemy, enemy, then ally. The Big Twist seals the deal in my book: Tyler Durden’s archetype? Trickster. Can’t you tell from the very first moment they meet?

Fight Club is one hell of a movie. And Tyler Durden is one hell of a great character.

Who else loves Fight Club?

Comment Archive