Posts Tagged ‘Mark Zuckerberg’

Frenzy on the Wall: Is The Social Network Fincher’s Best Film?

Monday, October 4th, 2010


I’ve made no secret of my love for David Fincher. Simply put, I think he’s one of the top five living filmmakers, the second best living American filmmaker and I anticipate the openings of each of his films the way someone might await seeing their favorite band at a concert. But is his latest film, The Social Network, his best film?

Even before I saw the most brilliantly constructed trailer of the last few years, I had The Social Network on the top of my list of films I needed to see in 2010. The problem that comes with that kind of anticipation is that it can lead to massive disappointment (see: Panic Room) and so as I sat down Friday afternoon and The Social Network began to unspool, I felt anxious.

Luckily, I had nothing to worry about. The Social Network is easily the best film I’ve seen so far this year and it’s not even close.

I think the most fascinating thing about Fincher’s career has been his ability to adapt to the material he chooses. Very rarely do we find scenes in Fincher’s films that seem over-directed or showy. When the camera does all those twists and turns in Fight Club or there is a super close-up, we never feel like we are taken out of the film. This goes hand in hand with why I think Fincher is so great: his ability to create a tone and mood, finding tension and milking it with every weapon in his arsenal including photography and editing. So while Fight Club had a lot of quick cuts, which kept us on our toes, Zodiac used well-timed cuts to create a sense of foreboding.

The Social Network is almost classic in its tone and mood. We have two separate lawsuits – although they never actually go to court – which makes the film feel a bit like a legal drama, but there’s also the rise to power of a genius which makes it feel perhaps like a Citizen Kane-esque operatic drama.

If I had to find a theme that runs through most of Fincher’s work, it would be alienation. He tends to be drawn to characters that don’t fit in: Morgan Freeman’s Detective Somerset in Se7en; Robert Downey, Jr.‘s Paul Avery in Zodiac; Brad Pitt as both Tyler Durden in Fight Club and Benjamin Button .

In The Social Network, we are presented with a very peculiar outcast in Mark Zuckerberg. What makes Zuckerberg so odd – and so compelling – is that he has a quick wit, lots of intelligence, and a good deal of bravado. Most people would use these gifts – not to mention his genius ability to work with computers – to gather as many friends as possible. I mean, the tools are there for him to be an extroverted and popular kid despite the fact that he’s no Brad Pitt.

But instead, Zuckerberg (as presented in the movie, at least) uses his abilities to cut people down and make them feel bad about themselves so that he could feel better about his life. Yet, the amazing thing is that he’s portrayed as longing to have friends, to have a girlfriend, to have a connection. And I think it’s an interesting perspective on the man who created the largest social networking site of all-time.

I have to say, though, that I didn’t find Zuckerberg to be a villain. Maybe it says a lot about me, but I found myself on his side for most of the film. Sure, he can be resentful and spiteful, but considering he’s a kid who doesn’t know how to deal with people, I can’t really blame him for a lot of what he does. In fact, I can defend every decision he makes throughout the film. I can even defend what he does to his best friend and business partner Eduardo Saverin. (Spoilers ahead)

When Zuckerberg, the brains behind the operation, decides to head out to Silicon Valley to grow the company (which turned out to be the right decision), Eduardo stays in New York instead of moving out to California with Mark. To me, that says that Eduardo didn’t believe in the company the way that Mark did. In any fledgling company, the CFO needs to, you know, oversee the business and make sure it’s running smoothly, that the funds are being used correctly. Eduardo clearly doesn’t think the site will take off the way it ultimately did.

Sure, you could say that Mark shouldn’t have betrayed his best friend in that way, but business is business. And the truth of the matter is, as depicted in the movie, Eduardo’s biggest contribution to the creation of the site was as the money-man. He supplied 19,000 bucks – money that Mark could have gotten from a number of other sources, including the Winklevoss twins. Of course, most of the audience I was with was rooting for Eduardo; when the crawl at the end of the film pops up on screen and informs us that Eduardo got a large settlement, the audience applauded. (End Spoilers)

I think the fact that I wasn’t rooting against Zuckerberg speaks to the film’s power. A lot of people have justly given credit to Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay, but mostly folks have pointed out his fine ear for dialogue. The dialogue is indeed strong, but the most important aspect of Sorkin’s script is the way he has structured the film in a complicated yet coherent way. The first part of the film is set at Harvard as Mark is creating Facebook and the second part of the film starts when Mark meets Sean Parker – the creator of Napster – and becomes enamored with how Parker operates so smoothly.

Meanwhile, there are two settlement hearings that take place after the events in the regular narrative, and those hearings are inter-spliced at key points throughout the film, giving us both a hint of what is to come for the characters and some perspective. It also helps to give Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins a voice that is equally as loud as Zuckerberg’s in the narrative. It was really a genius move on Sorkin’s part and I’d give him the Oscar for Best Screenplay based on that alone.

I haven’t mentioned the acting at all, so let me dedicated an entire paragraph to the masterful performance of Jesse Eisenberg. The whole cast is uniformly excellent – seriously, not a bad turn in the batch – but Eisenberg deserves special recognition for being the most effortlessly compelling protagonist of the year (and maybe the last few years). I say “effortlessly” but I’m sure there was a lot of work involved, it’s just that Eisenberg makes it seem easy. It’s not just the way he delivers Sorkin’s dialogue so naturally, it’s the way his eyes narrow when he’s thinking or the way his lips turn up into a smile when he’s creating FaceMash; more than anything, it’s the way he perks up with confidence when he knows he’s right.

He doesn’t just seem believable, he is believable and real. This is the kind of performance that is so difficult and that doesn’t get any credit because it’s not flashy. I’m sure the Academy will ignore what is, so far, the performance of the year, but I guarantee we’ll all be talking about it for years.

Now, onto the rest of the cast! Justin Timberlake is going to be a movie star, without a doubt. He exudes confidence in most of his scenes as Sean Parker and he would be so easy to detest if he wasn’t so charming; he makes us understand why Zuckerberg falls under his spell. I especially loved his scenes at the end, when he’s finally feeling vulnerable. Andrew Garfield is going to be a movie star too; in fact, he’s going to be Spider-Man. Garfield is certainly the heart of the film, the naïve soul who is destined to get his heartbroken.

We sympathize with him, we want him to be okay and we cheer when he breaks apart Zuckerberg’s laptop. Garfield arguably has the easiest task because the script sets him up as the puppy dog who squeals with delight about having groupies, but Garfield takes it to an interesting place. There is a vulnerability in the way Garfield speaks his lines that is affecting in a different way. And Arnie Hammer (with help from Josh Pence) astounded me as Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. The Winklevi could very easily be portrayed as villains, but the script and Hammer doesn’t allow that to happen; they actually seem like reasonable and bright gentlemen with an emphasis on the word “gentlemen,” as they believe very much in tradition and manners and codes of ethics. Hammer gets the best line in the film – a reference to Karate Kid that made me chuckle – but it’s in the way he delivers his lines as the Winklevoss twins, the way he imbues every line with conviction.

The other actors, from Rooney Mara as the girl who calls Zuckerberg an asshole in the beginning of the film to Rashida Jones who brings things full-circle at the end, are all excellent. John Getz, Brenda Strong, Joseph Mazzello, Max Minghella … everyone does their parts perfectly. There isn’t a single false note and it takes a lot of strong supporting work to be able to allow the leads to shine and everyone should be proud of their work here.

I have to give special mention to the music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross because I don’t usually pay that much attention to the scores of films unless they really strike me, but this is one that I want to buy immediately. I’ve been a big Reznor fan since I was a kid listening to Nine Inch Nails in my room and I always thought, based on his instrumental work, that he’d be a great film composer. Well, I was right, because this score kicked my ass right from the beginning when we see Zuckerberg creating FaceMash cross-cut with a Final Club party. Just masterful.

Jeff Cronenweth’s photography is as great as it usually is. He’s worked with Fincher since Se7en and I think he’s one of the more underrated cinematographers out there. Cronenweth has this one shot in Mark Romanek’s One Hour Photo where Robin Williams is running down a circular parking garage and it just blew my mind. Cronenweth is also smart to work with visually talented filmmakers and Fincher knows how to frame a shot that can be hung on a wall and called art.

The Social Network is the best film of the year so far and we’ve got three more months to go, but I feel it’s safe to say that it’ll be somewhere near the top of my ten best list in December. However, where does it rank with other Fincher films? That’s what I’ve been debating ever since I walked out of the movie and I’ve been wrestling with it all weekend.

I don’t think I can put it up there with Zodiac or Se7en yet because I feel like those two films have themes and stories that are timeless and I do worry that The Social Network could be dated in a few years. The theme might be timeless, but facts could emerge that could change our perception of what occurred. There’s still so much we don’t know and that could change.

On the other hand, I think Fight Club is one of the most important films ever made and it’s certainly one of the most important films for me, personally, as a cinema freak; I certainly can’t put The Social Network up there yet. I loved The Curious Case of Benjamin Button more than most people I know, but I suppose I could confidently say that The Social Network is better than that one. So, does that make it the fourth best film Fincher has done? I’m not entirely sure yet, I need to let it marinate a bit more. But if that’s so? Holy shit, that’s amazing. I mean, that’s not a knock on the film at all; if The Social Network, a brilliant film that I might even call a masterpiece, is only the fourth best film Fincher has made, then I don’t think I need to make any more arguments about why he’s the second best living American filmmaker.

Paul Thomas Anderson is still number one…for now.

(Side-note: It’s strange when I hear people call it “the Facebook movie” or folks complaining about the subject matter. Perhaps it’s just me, but the subject matter of a film is usually the least important aspect of a movie. A film could be about sex, which is arguably the most “exciting” and “risqué” topic there is, but that doesn’t automatically make the film riveting. And a film could be about people talking in rooms and it could be absolutely enthralling.

The truth of the matter is that The Social Network is really about people talking in rooms; they could be discussing creating any kind of business and I don’t really understand why people would be put off by the idea of that specific business being a website that most folks check several times a day.)

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Posted in Columns, Forrest, Frenzy On Column, MCN Originals, Movie City News | 10 Comments »

Review: The Social Network

Friday, October 1st, 2010

The problem with Facebook is not just how distracting it can be to try to focus on things like writing reviews rather than checking your newsfeed to see which of your friends has just said something particularly pithy or made a splendid gourmet meal for dinner; it’s also that it’s so darn hard to filter out things you don’t want to see at all — like, for instance, people raving about The Social Network before you’ve seen it yourself.

There’s no way on Facebook (that I know of anyhow) to tell it “don’t show me any updates with the words “The Social Network” until after I see the film (are you listening Mark Zuckerberg? Because the ability to filter out what you don’t want to see by keyword could be a nifty feature to add, and I won’t even sue you for $600 million for stealing using the idea). So even though I’ve tried very hard not to read or hear anything about The Social Network, David Fincher‘s and Aaron Sorkin‘s fictionalized story about the beginnings of Facebook, it would have been impossible for snippets not to filter through, unless I’d gone dark on Facebook altogether for the last couple weeks. Can you imagine how far behind I’d be on the minutae of my friends’ lives if I did that? Perish the thought.

Many of my friends, as you might expect, also work in this field, so in spite of my best efforts to the contrary, word of what many of them thought about The Social Network inevitably filtered down to me through my own social network. When I start to get the general idea that every critic and his brother is in love with a film — when comparisons to Gatsby and even the holy grail of Citizen Kane are being bandied about; when the film’s official site already boasts pull-quotes raving that this is, practically, the best film ever made in the entire history of films being made (and we haven’t even seen the Coens’ True Grit yet, people!) — well, I have to take a step back, try my best to distance myself from all the orgasmic gushing, and go into the film as unbiased as possible. Because a lot of the time — maybe even most of the time — the end result fails to live up to the hyperbole.

So now I’ve seen it and yes, okay, The Social Network really is all that and a bag of chips, as the kids say — for what it is. Not a “masterpiece.” Not “astounding.” Probably — almost definitely — not a film that will “literally” change your life. Maybe — dare I say it? — not even the absolute “best” film of Fincher’s oeuvre. And by the bye, what The Social Network is not, actually, is a film about Facebook, the social network, or an exploration of the impact of living our lives online, or a thoughtful exploration of the nature of social networking as a phenomenon.

So what is The Social Network? It’s a film with a very specific (and, I have to add, quite possibly not entirely accurate) story to weave about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who’s portrayed here as a grim, driven, humorless, almost savant-type guy who allows greed, his own intellectual superiority and sheer hubris to twist him into the kind of person who would screw over his best (in the movie, only) friend, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield).

As such, what this story needed to make it click is a study in opposites: a devil of a bad guy and a morally upright good guy, and what Fincher and Sorkin have created here is exactly that: a very one-dimensional, quite possibly unfair portrait of Zuckerberg-as-villain that fits exactly the shoe they wanted the character to fit.

Now, if you toss things like objectivity and the fairness of how you’re portraying real people completely out the window, and you look at The Social Network as purely a work of storytelling — at best a fiction based very loosely on one person’s interpretation of real events — then it is a pretty good film, that works as it needs to. Certainly a lot of critics will place The Social Network among the best films of this year.

And if it’s guilty of perhaps not entirely telling the objective truth about the founding of Facebook, of maybe unfairly and subjectively painting boy-wonder Zuckerberg in a particularly unflattering light while being, perhaps, just a tad biased in favor of Saverin (the only one involved, if you’re keeping track of things like that, who gave his side of things as a consultant for Ben Mezrich‘s book The Accidental Billionaires, Sorkin’s source material for the screenplay), well, what of it? After all, Zuckerberg didn’t choose to make himself accessible to tell his side, and besides that he’s super rich, so who cares if the portrayal of him in a movie that will be seen by millions is fair or accurate? Er, right?

It does all make for a heck of a good story, anyhow, and so far at least, neither Zuckerberg (played in the film by that boy-wonder of indie films, Jesse Eisenberg) nor controversial Napster-founder/now part-owner of Facebook Sean Parker (played here very well by Justin Timberlake, a boy wonder of another sort altogether) has filed any lawsuits alleging that Fincher, Sorkin or Mezrich got anything substantially wrong. Or at least, not wrong enough to make it worth suing over.

Nonetheless, as with any real-life story that involves friends falling out and lots of money, we should maybe keep in mind while watching The Social Network that this story does have two sides, and while Zuckerberg might be the main bad guy of The Social Network, the movie, this is also a tale that’s clearly very much spun from Saverin’s point of view as the guy who was dicked over by his best friend, to whom he fronted the money that seeded the business that made Zuckerberg the world’s youngest billionaire. Thus, we should, perhaps, take everything in this film with the proverbial grain of salt (even Sorkin himself has said in interviews that he’s not that familiar with Facebook, the website, and that The Social Network is “not a documentary.”)

Still, there’s no denying that The Social Network is effective storytelling and filmmaking, and that’s at least partly because Sorkin has written a script that makes what could have been the most boring subject matter imaginable: watching an antisocial computer geek — or at least, an approximation of what Sorkin thinks an antisocial computer geek looks and acts like — sitting at a computer writing tens of thousands of lines of code — and makes it pretty fascinating.

So Sorkin and Fincher paint us a story about a brilliant, socially inept, self-aggrandizing and arrogant kid, a guy so utterly solipsistic, so certain of his own superiority and brilliance, that he would have the balls to steal the basic idea — a social networking site exclusive to Harvard — brought to him by a pair of fellow Harvard students — the rowing, Olympic-bound, silver-spoon born Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler (both played here by Armie Hammer) and their business partner Divya Narenda (Max Minghella) — and, with mind-boggling speed and focus, expand it into something bigger, better and ultimately exponentially more profitable than anything the Winklevosses had imagined.

Completely accurate or not, Zuckerberg as portrayed by Eisenberg in the film is an excellent bad guy, the epitome of the cliched antisocial computer geek, who did, in fact, dream of and build something that surely far exceeded even the wildest expectations he had when he started. And Jesse Eisenberg is just terrific in his portrayal of Zuckerberg, the character who exists in this film. Eisenberg’s always been an actor to watch, but with this film he truly establishes himself as a star.

All the cast is great, by the way: Andrew Garfield does his job of making Saverin eminently likable and sympathetic (between this and Never Let Me Go, he is now teetering on the brink of real stardom); Timberlake as Sean Parker is just fantastic, rivaling Eisenberg’s performance, and even the smaller parts — most notably Rooney Mara as Erica Albright, the fictionalized girl who starts it all by breaking up with Zuckerberg in a bar when she wearies of his arrogance, Brenda Song as Saverin’s girlfriend, Hammer and Minghella — are uniformly excellent.

Fincher takes Sorkin’s excellently imagined script and grabs the short attention span of the Facebook generation by the horns, giving the film a brisk, almost brutal pace, cutting effortlessly among interspersed scenes of two separate lawsuits (culled, I believe, from actual court transcripts) and past events as Sorkin imagines they unfolded, without ever leaving us lost as to where we are in the story.

The directing is tight and paced, perhaps in homage to the speed with which Zuckerberg’s success (and personal failure?) fable unfolds — more reminiscent in style and pacing of Fight Club or Se7en than Zodiac or Benjamin Button — though in many ways it’s as artistically conceived as Zodiac, my personal favorite of Fincher’s films.

As you would expect from a Fincher film, the cinematography (by Jeff Cronenwerth, who shot Fight Club and worked on Se7en) and editing (Angus Wall, who edited Panic Room, Zodiac and Benjamin Button and Kirk Baxter, Benjamin Button) are practically perfect as well, and Fincher, as he did so well with Zodiac‘s newsroom, really nails the environment — what it feels like to be a student at Harvard, what it felt like to be working in a fast-paced internet startup at the height of the internet bubble. You feel, truly, as if you are a fly on the wall watching all these events unfold, and it’s riveting, captivating, fascinating.

As to whether it’s all true — or whether anyone involved sees the irony in a studio making millions of dollars off a rather questionable skewering of a real guy who happens to be a billionaire — well … that’s a question for another day, I suppose.

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Posted in Film, Film Essent, MCN Blogs, MCN Originals, MCN Weekend, MCN Weekend Reviews, Movie City News, Movie Review, Reviews, Voynar | 4 Comments »

You Can’t Block Mark Zuckerberg On Facebook

Sunday, August 22nd, 2010

You Can’t Block Mark Zuckerberg On Facebook

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Facebook Not Allowed To Check Into Social Network Over Factual Reservations; Scott Rudin Granted Rare Times Italics In Quotation The Blowback On Facebook Friends Checking Others Into “Places”

Saturday, August 21st, 2010

Facebook Not Allowed To Check Into Social Network Over Factual Reservations; Scott Rudin Granted Rare Times Italics In Quotation
And – The Blowback On Facebook Friends Checking Others Into “Places”

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