Fight Club is probably #1 on my favorites list. I’ve rooted out most of the subtleties of this movie in multiple viewings, but never completely understood these final words between naarator and Tyler.
“Tyler, I want you to listen to me very carefully… my eyes are open.”
boom
“What’s that smell?”
I figured he accidently pulled the trigger before he finished what he was going to say. Then, that smell was of the ignited gunpowder around his nose.
I took “my eyes are open,” to mean “I am fully aware of what I’m doing.” Good call on the smell of gunpowder.
Definately the gunpowder. The smoke is coming directly out of Tyler’s mouth and into his nose. The bullet through his brain was probably preventing any real cognative thought.
The bullet went out the side of his face, approximately where his jaw is connected to his skull. I think his aim was off, and that’s why he failed to kill himself. Whether the bad aim was intentional or not is another argument.
I thought the, “what’s that smell?” quote was referencing a famous person’s last words. Something like, “Do you smell that?” or something. Can’t for the life of me remember who that was. Of course, this is the best place to ask that question. I’m sure somebody will come up with the answer
“My eyes are open” is the narrator’s (I’ll call him Jack here) way of telling Tyler that he understands what he is about to do–kill himself to rid himself of Tyler.
Tyler’s goal is complete anarchy; Jack’s original problem is how regimented his life is. Ideally, he’d pursue a happy medium, and at first, that’s Tyler’s goal. When Fight Club becomes Project Mayhem, however, the goals change. Until Jack has agreed to Tyler’s extremist agenda, Tyler will continue to exist and drag Jack further into the abyss. Jack’s only escape from his unwanted tenant is suicide, but a suicide attempt will suffice, as long as the intent is truly to harm himself (total self-destruction). It’s the thought that counts, since that’s all that Tyler really knows. To fake out Tyler, Jack has to fake out even himself. He has to do this by either (a) really intending to kill himself, or (b) exerting his will to “hide” his true intention from Tyler. Personally, I think it was (a).
That’s why, when Jack says “my eyes are open,” he is effectively banishing Tyler from his life–by intending to kill himself he has surrendered to Tyler’s agenda of total self-destruction and abandoned the total control over his life which caused Tyler to come into being. At the same time, Jack is asserting to Tyler that Tyler is no longer needed, because Jack has learned all that Tyler had to teach.
“What’s that smell?” It’s gunpowder or cordite. You could extrapolate it to be the metaphorical “puff of smoke” into which one’s demons disappear when banished, but I think I remember in the book that it was just the narrator realizing that he had survived–a sort of awakening.
Indeed, the bullet went out the side of Jack’s face, but it went right through Tyler’s brain. If you watch it again, right before Tyler falls you see a huge hole in the back of his head.