©David Fincher
to follow through with a blockbuster. He caught everyone by surprise with an even more intimist, yet even more twisted film: The Game. Fincher proved his ability to lead the viewer wherever he wanted through his perfect narrative skills. For those who doubted it, David Fincher has issues with the bleakness of his times. Paranoid? Most certainly. In 1999, David Fincher directed the film that would define a whole generation, a metaphor for this generation without a cause and without moral compass, ready to endure pain and self-destruction just to feel alive. Or, as Brad Pitt’s character says: « We’re a generation of men raised by women. I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer we need». A common theme to the author of the eponymous novel, Chuck Palahniuk. We are talking about the amazing Fight Club. It has all the usual Fincher themes, from darkness to contemporary Kafkaesque absurdity. From paranoia to schizophrenia. From group submission to egomaniacal revolution. David Fincher used 1,500 reels of film for the movie, three times the volume of a typical big production, because the director shot endless takes, until the actors were exhausted. However, they obeyed without complaining. And so
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Tyler Durden became the stuff of legend. And the voice-over has never been used more effectively since. David Fincher entered the third millennium in a more subdued way with the very intimist Panic Room in 2002. A commissioned work, it was not fully representative of his style. But since he did not have to deal with the writing, he focused solely on direction. He experimented a lot, used special effects again, exhausting all the possibilities of the camera just like he used to do with his actors. Finally, the camera itself became an actor of the film. The success of the film also owed a lot to the performances of Forest Whitaker and Jodie Foster, who was also due to act in The Game before her schedule made it impossible. Jodie Foster even turned down the role of president of the Cannes Film Festival just so she could work with David Fincher. That is the Fincher effect. We had to wait 5 years for the next David Fincher film, Zodiac. A decade after Seven, he was dealing once again with investigations and a serial killer. This was an impossible film to make. First of all, because it was a true story, but also because it had no ending. A dead end, a head-first dive into administrative absurdity. How can you direct
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