The "Clockwork Orange" Of The New Millennium...

Rating: Null/10 (21 November 2000)

What Anthony Burgess had to say about the nature of violence, nihilism, sex, death and What It All Means was underlined by Stanley Kubrick's film of his brilliant novel A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.
What Burgess and Kubrick did for their time, now author Chuck Palahniuk and director David Fincher have done for theirs with FIGHT CLUB. But watching both films back to back, (if you dare,) you can see that the comparison between the two is anything but a simple one.
For one thing, Fincher uses Palahniuk's novel as a blueprint to address so many issues and concerns of our times with an urgency that makes Kubrick's ORANGE look like it's standing still, building a message-laden story that dwarfs the earlier film with its devastating power, hidden in plain sight as it is.
There is a song from, of all things, the CITY OF ANGELS soundtrack, "Iris" by the Goo-Goo Dolls, that contains one line that sums up the entire plot of FIGHT CLUB in a nutshell....
"Yeah, you bleed just to know you're alive..."
But crack open that nutshell, and within it you'll find all the questions you never dared asked before about yourself. Who are you now, where are you going, where would you like to be? WHO would you like to be?

Using the darkest side of the human condition as a mirror, Fincher has turned that mirror towards us before with SE7EN and THE GAME. With FIGHT CLUB, he has gone more layers deeper than this forum has space to contemplate.
Just watch it with an open mind, with friends who can do the same. Then watch it together several more times, and then discuss it. You'll be surprised at some of the questions the film inspires you to come up with. And the answers, if you find them...