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Once We Are Aware Of The Films Twist We Can See That She Is Not Herself An ...

Once we are aware of the films twist we can see that she is not herself an irrational and emotionally damaged women, but she is involved with a man who himself is mentally ill.
The first morning after she has slept with Tyler, Jack shocks her with his off hand and rude attitude towards her and she leaves offended. In the first version of this scene Marla's flirty behavior towards Jack and the extent to which she is offended both seem excessive. Looking at the scene in retrospect after the twist is revealed Marla becomes a sympathetic character. We can see that she is working hard at a relationship with a man whose behavior is unexplainable and irrational.
Of course no discussion of Fight Club would be complete without a discussion of Tyler as a personification of Jack's ID. The pleasure centre of the male brain suppressed to the point of breaking and released through a dervish of hedonistic need-gratifying instinctual sexuality and aggression. Project mayhem is a focus of Jacks aggression onto the corporations that cause the dissatisfaction with modern life. It is the unrestrained release of Jacks suppressed internalized instinct that is the catalyst for the events of the film and lead to the explosive finale. Here we can see that in this most it is character that is driving the narrative forward.
The deeper implications of Fight Club's ending segue nicely towards discussion of surrealist film. But before we move on we must return momentarily to the distinction that Phillips made between a character and a figure with narrative function, we can see that he qualifies the statement by making his comments specific to realist narrative. In a surrealist film with a non linear narrative the relationship between character and narration may be altered.
In David Lunch's Mulholland Dr. (2001) characters may become surrogates for the audience in their quest to understand what is going on. The film centres around two women Betty (Naomi Watts) and Rita (Laura Elana Harring.) Rita has lost her memory and found her way to Betty's apartment with a wounded head and bag full of money. The film follows their shared quest to find Rita's true identity as well as the lives of other characters to which the women are somehow connected.
We as audience are also on a quest to decipher Lynch's narrative, and at moments of revelation such as the money in the handbag, or Rita's memory of the name Dianne Selwyn; we as audience and they as characters are intrigued and excited at the possibility of placing another piece of the narrative jigsaw puzzle. There is also of course the information that we are aware of the two women are not such as the involvement of shadowy figures such as Cowboy (Lafayette Montgomery) and Mr Roque (Michael J Anderson,) but this information poses more questions than answers. As a result the women's story is relatively straightforward and increases audience identification.


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