You’re going to be reading/hearing a lot of things about this picture; hell, you’ve most likely already read and heard a lot of things about this picture; I’m actually going to be writing about it at some length for an online venue to be introduced/discussed here at a slightly later date; and you can imagine my existential agonies as I try to conceive some sort of vaguely new “angle” from which I may examine it that will actually pertinent and maybe even interesting when the time, which is short, comes. In the meanwhile, it seems perhaps unfair to this blog and its readers that I should let my first viewing of the film go unnoted here. So, a couple of things.
First off, it really is a fantastically entertaining film that places a good deal of trust in its audience and then pays it off in enjoyment. It is not, of course, difficult in the way that other New York Film Festival pictures I’ve discussed here, such as Certified Copy and Film Socialisme, are difficult. But it does throw you into the insular but seminal Ivy League world of its characters pretty much head-first and then zooms along, and if you don’t get into the swim of it right away, you may get lost. I went to a state school in Passaic County in the late ’70s/early ’80s. I didn’t know what a “final club” was then and I really don’t much know now. You may think that the film is asking you to know what a “final club” is. It isn’t. It’s just asking you on for the ride. Once you’re in and you stop worrying, it doesn’t matter. And then, once you understand what screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher are doing with the structure—it’s not as straightforward as it initially seems, chronology-wise—you’re ready for it, and it’s a pleasure to get it. And to switch metaphors, and worse yet, to resort to a really hoary one, it’s like being in a supercharged Lamborghini on a clear road with an expert driver who just opens the thing up, and the shift to the high gear is the smoothest rush ever. Nice.
I said it on Twitter and I’ll say it here: proclaiming “I’m not interested in this movie because I couldn’t care less about Facebook” is like announcing “I’m not interested in All About Eve because self-absorbed theater people really turn me off.” I mean, we’re all grown-ups here, we’ve been around, we’ve seen a bunch of films, we all kind of know…what I’m trying to say here is, isn’t it pretty elemental…that a film isn’t really necessarily “about” what it’s about; no? This being the sort of observation that allows the very gifted Mr. Sorkin to invoke Aeschylus at press conferences, because of the whole grand-human-themes bit. It may be pompous on his part, but it’s not entirely wrong. (For all that, there are some who believe that the film’s themes aren’t Sufficiently Something to make it a Really Significant something; see, if you must, David Poland’s silly “Doesn’t say Big Theme to me” “review,” which gave me a bracing reminder of why I found the guy such an inviting figure of fun and/or rabid, insane contempt back when I was having my own angry-man-in-the-dark [that’s a line from the movie!] relationship with the film blogosphere.) Anyway, you might be wondering what my larger point is, e.g., do I actually think this film is as good as All About Eve, and, yeah, I do, maybe. Most likely, even. And it’s got snazzier visuals that are going to wear better than 95% of the other Snazzy Visuals of Our Time, too. (Godard, writing on Joseph Mankiewicz in 1958, provides a presage of why a Sorkin/Fincher teamup is close to ideal, and why Sorkin is probably smart not to try his hand at directing: “[T]he complaint one might make about Mankiewicz: […] he is too perfect a writer to be a perfect director as well. Basically, what is missing from The Quiet American is cinema. It has everything—brilliant actors, sparkling dialogue—but no cinema.” Fincher brings cinema to The Social Network in a way that Rob Reiner absolutely could not for A Few Good Men.)
Let me move the bar on this question, just for the hell of it: why wouldn’t you be interested in Facebook, anyway, except for the opportunity to place yourself above it. There’s a commenter over at Wells’ place who’s yammering on about how Social Network is about “an essentially trivial social phenomenon,” and in order for it to be really important is should really be about “about Britain’s war for survival” (everybody genuflect!) or something else that’s really elevating. Not only is this bleat classic dumb faux-middlebrow breast-beating, it could also be wrong. Yes, Facebook is a “social phenomenon,” but we don’t know that it’s necessarily trivial. The internet has, in its various permutations, been redefining the concept of privacy, which concept I suspect—I’m not entirely sure, mind you, I only suspect—is a central one in certain corners of Western culture. That, in itself, is potentially a very big deal for Civilization Itself, and Facebook is an interesting and apt cynosure from/at which to consider this cultural shift, I think.
And that shall have to do for here and now. But, okay, I’ll relate an anecdote that reveals what an awful person I am, because I know some of you kind of like that. So at the press screening, there’s this guy in maybe his late twenties sitting in a row in front of me, and he’s huge. Like, I mean, enormous…and I know, that as somebody who weighed 300 pounds last Christmas, it’s way too soon for me to go all Wells and start looking down on the heftier folks among us…but honestly, this guy was gigantic. It was like you took three of me and stood them side by side and tied them together with bungee cords. But he was cheerful, and peppy, peppy like, (as per my perfervid imagination) if you put him in front of a buffet table, he’d turn into Pac-Man. And anyway, because I’m an awful person, before the screening I would nudge several of my row mates, good and kind and wonderful people all, who are all very indulgent of me, and who I won’t name, because I don’t want to embarrass them, and I would say, indicating this fellow, “Please. Don’t eat me. Please.” Which I thought was hilarious, and only in part because I was so overly caffeinated. (“You need to eat something right now,” My Lovely Wife said immediately upon hearing my voice when I phoned her after the screening.) Anyway, this fellow got quite a bit of enjoyment out of the movie, but I couldn’t help notice that the line he laughed hardest at, actually clapped with delight at…was the line that dropped a Karate Kid reference. And I thought, “Of course…”
Were you at the junket screening? That sounds an awful lot like the legendary Earl Dittman.
No, it was the Friday a.m. NYFF screening at the Walter Reade…
That guy over at Wells’ site equates the triviality of a movie about Facebook to a (hypothetical) movie about the creation and marketing of ‘Hello Kitty’ – maybe it’s just me, but I’d love to see such a film!
If the tackling of self-evidently big, important and memorable subjects automatically resulted in big, important and memorable movies, then Richard Attenborough would be regarded as one of cinema’s biggest, most important and memorable directors.
But it doesn’t, and Attenborough sure as heck ain’t.
As good as “All about Eve”? Wow. That’s… quite a pronouncement.
It’s the kind of thing that publicists would inmediately grab as a blurb for the ad campaign… that is, if more than 5% of current moviegoers knew what “All about Eve” is.
If someone does up an awesome FILM SOCIALISME/SOCIAL NETWORK mash-up, I will buy them a jet airplane. STIPULATION: must have an original theme song by the Sons of Pioneers as sung by Professor Pluggy, in authentic Navajo.
Glenn, the junket’s happening this weekend – it’s entirely possible they got Dittman into your screening as a scheduling thing. Was he wearing a baseball cap? Did he need two canes to walk? Did he speak too loudly in a vaguely Southern accent?
Seriously, I can’t believe there’s another person who looks like that (and claps in the same way when he’s laughing) in this industry.
Oh, @PaulJBis; just say “Showgirls” instead of “All About Eve”. You’ll die a little inside, but more people will understand what you’re talking about …
I am somewhat interested in seeing this movie, but from the outside, its subject matter doesn’t seem to me to be “unworthy of cinema” so much as “hard to make compelling on film.” I guess the story of Mark Zuckerberg, creepy freak, is sort of interesting, but he’s a little young for the Charles Foster Kane treatment. I’d be more interested in a movie that told the stories of Facebook users – what they use the site for, and how that breaks down by age, region, etc., without it turning into the equivalent of a Powerpoint demographics report. That would probably do a better job of limning the social change you’re talking about in your post – one I believe is very real and very important. I mean, my Facebook profile might as well be a LinkedIn profile – almost all my “friends” are people I’ve written articles for, writers I’ve assigned things to while working as an editor, musicians I’ve written about or met through other musicians, etc., etc. Out of 500-some friends, less than a dozen are related to me, and only one or two are people I went to school with or anything like that. And my wife is not a Facebook user. But we’re very much the exceptions, I think.
@ Norm: No, this guy walked without canes, and skewed a lot younger than the fellow you mentioned…who I just Googled and…oh my. Yeah, I’ve seen that dude, he’s all sinister and shit. This guy WAS a lot younger, like a preppie who’d been inflated, and…wow, I can’t believe we’re talking about this poor unfortunate soul who’s not here to defend himself, although, what would he say? “It’s glandular, and ‘Karate Kid’ is awesome”? Who knows?
Coming up in consumer electronics journalism, I became acquainted in the mid-80s with a good number of morbidly obese scribes. All of whom are dead now, of course. I particularly remember one fellow, white of beard, who was known for having incredibly discerning ears and being a terrible, contempt-dripping snob, and he really was…I mean, at my pre-internet worst, I looked like Judah Friedlander in that give-everybody-a-hug Dave Matthews video next to this guy. High-end audio reps would quake in fear as he tooled the hallways of Vegas hotels in his scooter, ready to tell anybody that their $25,000 mono tube pre-amp just didn’t quite make it…
Anyway, one year the guy had had his stomach stapled as a potential corrective to his problem of being unfuckingbelievably huge, and if one looked very hard one could see that he had dropped a few pounds, but he was still finding his new regimen, whatever the hell it was, pretty challenging. I had to sit at a table with him at a big RCA dinner (despite his deploring the shoddy products of the mass manufacturers, he was still more than willing to dine on their dime), and I watched in an almost hypnotic state as, before the dinner proper began, he plucked pre-packaged butter pats from a bowl in the center of the table, peeled off their tops, and sucked the still more-or-less frozen butter out of them, one by one. Holy shit.
That’s … horrifying. I want to say something glib – “this is why the terrorists hate us” – but that’s just so very, very awful. I think I need to lie down now.
(Back to the Dittman thing, the guy didn’t seem too far into his thirties when I met him a couple of years back on the “Dark Knight” junket.)
(I kinda hate junkets.)
As much as I want to see the movie (read the script, big fan of Sorkin’s, with a couple of exceptions, big fan of Fincher’s, with one major exception (yes, it was BENJAMIN BUTTON), fan of the leads), I am a little tired of Sorkin’s bashing of the Internet. I don’t mind his proclaiming this has grander themes than that, because (a) it does, and (b) that may have been his way into the story. But considering how he not only used to be an enthusiastic contributor to the Internet back in the days of “The West Wing,” but also how Internet folks were his biggest fans back in the day, it seems more than a little wrong. I mean, yes, he’s had bad experiences with it back in the TWW days, but I think that was partly his own fault, and shouldn’t turn him into a snob about it.
@ lipranzer: Yeah, Sorkin should basically NEVER do interviews, as it tends to make Sorkin-bashing more justifiable, and more fun. Also, his speaking voice resembles Harvey Fierstein’s, which is odd when you think about how much Sorkin would like to think he’s an older doppelgänger for Aaron Eckhart. But whatever. His script for “Social Network” is, I think, precisely the sort of thing that made his reputation, so it’s worth holding your nose about the guy himself.
@ Norm: Well, the funny thing is, this guy really fancied himself rather European, sensibility-wise. I think the kind of consumption he, um, embodied transcended nationalist traits…
Thanks for this, Glenn.
I loved this movie, and was thrilled to see it, although if it hadn’t had Fincher’s name attached, I admit I wouldn’t have looked forward to it so eagerly. (I think Sorkin writes great dialogue, but if you read it on the page, with the characters’ names redacted, I wonder if you’d be able to tell who was speaking – like Woody Allen, a lot of his people sound alike to me).
But, no, I thought the film was top-to-bottom terrific, straight down the line to the Trent Reznor contributions to the soundtrack.
And as for those who wonder that Facebook is too “trivial” a subject for serious art – well, yes, people use social-networking sites for a lot of nonsense. Just as there are a lot of bad snapshots out there, or awful network shows. But that doesn’t mean that photography or television themselves aren’t of huge interest in what they mean as media and in the way they changed our culture.
Preaching to the choir, of course, but it’s what an artist makes of his or her subject, isn’t it, whether it’s James Whale and monsters or Douglas Sirk and melodrama? (It’s a much more minor example, but I remember having a fine time years ago at “White Men Can’t Jump” and “Tin Cup,” even though basketball, golf and Don Johnson all pretty much bore me to distraction.)
p.s. And while we’re on junket trolls? PLEASE, who is that terrible old man who sits in the front row actually TYPING UP HIS REVIEW on some Radio Shack laptop while the movie screens? And how can he be stopped?
Glenn, you shouldn’t have told that story. Today’s been unpleasant enough as it is without reading about a guy sucking up frozen butter.
Sorkin, by the way, is the big stumbling block for me. I’m simply not a fine of the guy, at all. His style grates terribly on me, so I can only hope he used some different tools this time around.
At the promotional screening I attended on Wednesday night, the KARATE KID line got one of the biggest laughs. I think the line works because it comes out of nowhere, yet makes perfect sense within the conversation that’s taking place. The line did make me wonder about its origins. Sorkin diesn’t seem like the kind of dude who would write a shout-out to an awesome ’80s go-for-broke sleeper that changed the lives of every 10-year-old who saw it on HBO throughout their youth.
Another big laugh was when Eduardo’s crazy girlfriend asked him, “Why does your relationship status say single?”
I must admit to giving a golf clap when Mark asked, “Does that answer your condescending question?”
NOt to spoil anything, but any true music lover will appreciate Fincher’s choice for a closing-credits song. It’s a song that has never been featured on any of the band’s multiple best-of compilations, but I can’t think of a better, more fitting song for the moment.
Yeah, the Karate Kid line got the biggest laugh overall at yesterday’s screening at Walter Reade. Because it’s funny and surprising. So, maybe leave the overweight guy alone. (And it’s not like it was thrown in there among a bunch of high-toned jokes about Adam Smith and Corneille…the movie’s pretty easy to follow.)
But also, and perhaps (frankly) the nastiness of this post highlights this, self-loathing and incivility are, I’d say, bigger problems in the film critic community than weight gain. It’s easy to lash out at the fat guy when the rest of the world could easily lash out at…for example…bottomless wells of sarcasm and an inability to look people in the eye (characteristics many critics seem to share…to say nothing of the adult acne, the sad pallor, the bad shoes, etc.) I’m not just pointing fingers at Glenn here, who seems aware of the pettiness here, but hey, ridiculing a guy one row behind him…this is a little icky.
I mean, nevermind the junket losers: anyone ever interacted with Jonathan Rosenbaum? Yeah, it’s not pleasant. Good critic, but let’s just say you wouldn’t want to share a foxhole with him.
I’ve yet to have my Fincher conversion moment, but your write-up, along with Fincher’s ability to stay on my list of ‘interesting, oh yes very interesting, I must admit’ directors without ever quite winning my affections, has actually made me eager to see this one. Fincher’s skill at fabricating worlds hermetically and paranoiacally sealed off from the rest of history has always been his talent and curse, and it looks like that tendency might fit this narrative especially well. The fawning, carefully sculpted preciousness of Benjamin Button made that movie intolerable to me, but this sounds like it turns a critical, if not unsympathetic eye, to the insularity of its characters and their milieu, so at the very least, it looks unlikely it will be a repeat of the teeth gnashing experience of Button.
Anyone want to guess the headline of Armond White’s review of THE SOCIAL NETWORK?
@ Norm and Bill: Boy. You guys are squeamish. Remind me not to tell you another story from the same era, of breakfast with another morbidly obese consumer electronics journalist, who was also very heavily acne-scarred, and enjoying a hearty plate of sunny-side up fried eggs. Memories…light the corners of my mind…
@Bill: Just go in and don’t even THINK ABOUT Aaron Sorkin. I’m 80% sure you’ll be fine.
@ John M.: Your comments make me wanna lay into the fat guy even more; how’s that for abnormal psychology? But seriously…I know that the “Karate Kid” reference is a legitimate universal laugh line. And it’s not as if the guy then burst into tears at “Why does your relationship status say ‘single’?” The point, inasmuch as I actually had one, was that this guy was laughing VERY ostentatiously, clapping his hands, making sure everybody knew that he GOT IT and he LOVED IT…exactly as an obnoxious smarty-pants self-styled cinephile might do at a Film Forum screening of “Pierrot le fou” when Belmondo drops Celine’s name. Which I found kind of…interesting. Know what I’m saying?
You wanna make fun of him more? Jeesh, poor guy!
I know what you’re saying, Glenn. Unfortunately, “laughing out loud to signal that one’s retention of the film is greater than others” is a characteristic of many other critics I’ve witnessed, good and bad, and many serious filmgoers at Forum, Anthology, etc. For whatever reason, a lot of the specimens who go into that world grasp at certain defense mechanisms more baldly than most. As if to say, “Yes, I spend a great chunk of my life watching movies in the dark, but have no fear, I’m really getting it.”
The reverse reaction is almost as pathological. Didn’t you write a post somewhere about being yelled at for laughing at…some comedy? Now THAT’S funny.
Also, @bill: I know what you mean about Sorkin, but really, yeah, your problems might evaporate during The Social Network. Fincher and his incredibly nuanced performers have digested Sorkinese quite well. (Regarding Franzen, though: you might wanna steer clear. His angry liberals might just…make you angry.)
@Glenn – I am weirdly squeamish about gross food stories/images. Hardee’s used to have these commercials that relentlessly and noisely featured people eating burgers, and it made my skin crawl. But I like food! I do! A lot!
As for Sorkin, it is my hope that your advice pays off.
@John M – Eh. I’m at a point where, politicially speaking, I pretty much hate everybody and everything. My personal views haven’t changed much, but I don’t feel particularly loyal to any public figure or party these days. Which doesn’t mean Franzen won’t drive my crazy with bloodlust, but I’m still willing to give THE CORRECTIONS a shot.
Yes, bill, in that case, definitely give THE CORRECTIONS a shot. I should also point out that one of the main (and eventually sympathetic) characters in FREEDOM is a Republican.
By the way, whether or not you read FREEDOM or THE CORRECTIONS first wouldn’t matter. In case you’re excited about water cooler cred, or something–“I’ve just finished the latest Franzen!”–but I somehow doubt you care.
@bill: be warned, the opening scene of SOCIAL NETWORK is likely to drive you nuts. It’s damn near a parody of rapid-fire Sorkinese, and Fincher doesn’t exactly diminish this by using alternating closeups to underline Zuckerberg’s isolation and mule-brained social awkwardness. But then, I do believe, things get better. A lot.
I once ate an entire stick of butter to win a $10 bet. Those are the only circumstances, I believe, in which consuming butter– just butter, all on its lonesome– is excusable.
I should maybe throw in a note or two of demurral re: THE SOCIAL NETWORK, as much as I enjoyed it.
Things to discuss: the way the third act just sort of fizzles away. The nagging lack of consequence. The feeling that, after all, this is a fairly run-of-the-mill True Tale dressed up with very fine directing and very fine dialogue. After so much I’ve read, it really only hints at the greater themes: weirdly enough, Facebook and the effect most fear in Facebook (a breakdown of privacy) get brushed over.
And, yeah, no way does Harvard actually feel like that.
@John M – The water cooler thing isn’t something I seek out, but I certainly don’t mind it. It’s just that the few times I actually try to get in on something on the ground floor, it doesn’t work. Due to a mistake at my local Barnes & Noble, I was able to buy, and read, Roth’s THE HUMBLING about two weeks before anybody else who’s not a paid critic. But then nobody talked about the damn thing (which I liked a lot, by the way).
@Tom Carson – I don’t expect Sorkin’s style to be completely invisible. That’s too much to ask for. I plan on gritting my teeth and hoping for the best.
“It’s just that the few times I actually try to get in on something on the ground floor, it doesn’t work.”
bill, you sound just like a Jonathan Franzen character.
Besides that it’s kinda cheap to slap at me without bothering to make your case in any real way, I should point out that I don’t think The Social Network is lesser than All About Eve either. And like All About Eve, I suspect that the grandest cult around this film will be an unexpected one.
Like Precious last year, Social Network is a movie that really works best for a group that is not portrayed in the film. Then “smart people” can attach all their stuff to it, even though it’s not in the film.
Regardless, as my apparently ridiculous review said, repeatedly, it’s a very, very good movie. But I don’t see any cultural importance to it, by Sorkin’s design. Maybe he thinks he hit the IMPORTANT key, but I have yet to read or hear from a single person who has convinced me that there is more there than meets the glibness. Good character. Good story. Beautifully shot. Well acted. Yay.
The movie doesn’t touch on the cultural impact of Facebook in any meaningful way. It would be like saying that Super Size Me explores the impact of McDonald’s. It doesn’t. It presumes the impact. And because it is so familiar to everyone, that worked. Here, really, there isn’t even that much of an effort to connect Facebook to culture. No one in the film is impacted by Facebook except as an object that is in their lives.
And the obsession some seem to have with comparing it to Citizen Kane is the triumph of myopia… 3 years in a 20something’s life = an epic life spanning decades of change. Oy.
The only real “problem” I have with this film is not that I don’t like it or think that it missed the boat by not being something more or something else. It’s the absurd overreaching of the media squad, trying to taking things they like a lot and making them into cultural events.
I will keep reading, hoping to see the error of my ways… especially yours, Glenn. “A film isn’t really necessarily “about” what it’s about” YES. Obviously. My entire point.
Except that The Social Network IS about what it’s about.
No shame in that. But as superlatives fly, I hope some people will plant their flags clearly. Arguments can be had. All I am saying is that I have not read a single piece that created a convincing bridge, for me, from this film to something more than the spectacular skill with which the story is told.
PS Shouldn’t we be saving any All About Eve chat for Black Swan?
Actually, the ALL ABOUT EVE film Ibsaw at Toronto was Alain Corneau’s LOVE CRIME. In the Q‑and‑A, Ludivine Sagnier said, in response to yours truly, that EVE was the only explicit film reference Corneau gave the vast and crew, despite being a cinephilic director with a love for Hitchcock and Lang (the latter of whom you also can really see in LOVE CRIME, especially in a kind of geometric determinism)
Please define how the “cinema” was brought to “The Social Network”.
P.S. I don’t care anything involving Facebook. Call me a snob then.
@ David Poland: I don’t really understand your point, as the “All About Eve” stuff I bring up isn’t relative to my complaints about your complaint. But I apologize for the tone of my complaint about your complaint, because I see it looks like I’m trying to stir up shit again when I was just trying to recall an old and unpleasant state of mind. The bottom line is, you and I see a lot of things very differently, and express our perceptions of those things very differently. One thing, for me is, I just do not give a flying what-have-you about “big” statements, “big” themes, in and of themselves. I think to demand such things is to have an allegiance to aesthetic and/or ethical values that are, finally, false and maybe pernicious. It’s a philosophical difference, and I don’t think we’re ever gonna bridge it. But, yes, I likely could have expressed it in a less cheap way, so, sorry. But I do think that the film implicitly addresses the very thing you don’t think it addresses, through the prism of Zuckerberg’s ruined relationship with Erica. But we can maybe discuss this some other time.
And doesn’t “Black Swan” have some fantastical element that, from my perspective, would totally remove it from the worlds of “Eve” and “Network,” which aspire to be some form of “realistic?”
But…@ David and @ Victor, really, my “Eve” analogy was initially entirely arbitrary; what first popped into my head was something like “You won’t watch ‘The Alexander Graham Bell Story’ because you say you hate phones,” or some such, except, no offense to Don Ameche, but the “Bell” movie doesn’t quite make it. “Eve” struck me as a picture that was both of and out of the circumscribed world it took place in, as “Network” is. Only after that did I ponder the notion that I got the same kind of enjoyment out of both. Only one is much sexier…guess which.
Finally. @ Ricardo Cantoral:
You write: “Please define how the ‘cinema’ was brought to ‘The Social Network’.”
Oh, you know. Through camera placement, movement, production design, editing, that sort of thing.
“I don’t care anything involving Facebook. Call me a snob then.”
As I think you’re entirely aware, you’re asking to be called something a little worse, but I don’t think I’ll give you the satisfaction. Good night.
So please tell me that all the stuff about mocking and then attempting to identify (by, among other things, ruling out potential candidates by name) the fat guy with the lowbrow cinephile chops who sat in front of Glenn at the press screening is meant as some kind of case study or meta-narrative about how exactly Facebook (and some of its fellow travelers, i.e., insular troll-baiting blogs) is redefining “the concept of privacy.” I was originally just going to suggest, before you got to the fat guy, that what Facebook has changed has even more to do with the nature of communication than of privacy. I mean, really, John M: taking Glenn (legitimately) to task for mocking an anonymous fat guy and then completely undermining your point with a gratuitous shot at another critic by name? And Glenn: isn’t there even a little bit of a waiting period between getting into shape and mocking people who aren’t?
That said, I’ll bet even the fat guy wouldn’t touch those Pop chips and the garlic-cream-sandwich Ritz crackers. Is it that hard to Skype in a fucking bagel platter?
“Oh, you know. Through camera placement, movement, production design, editing, that sort of thing.”
Thanks for the un-welcome sarcasm. This seems to be a trial with you to identify what is so “cinematic” about this film, it’s very subjective of what is “cinematic”. Is elaboration beyound your capacity ? To be frank, it’s people like you who make me wonder why film criticism could be a occupation. Lastly, If your actually going to have the audacity to say a movie about Facebook is as gripping as All About Eve you best come up with examples to support your claims.
And in comes Ricardo with his social graces.
Odd when people get so angry about a movie before actually seeing it. Chill. Chill.
Mr. Kenny is trying to get me to be believe something very stupid here, the subject of facebook could not possibly enter the film about the creators of the social network. I was being entirely open in saying I could care less about facebook and yet Mr. Kenny, ellegedly a rational adult, could not handle this and somehow I am something worse than a snob. I am waiting for the next installment of his views of this film encompassing more amusing antecdotes about the fat guy he witnessed at the prese screening.
“One thing, for me is, I just do not give a flying what-have-you about “big” statements, “big” themes, in and of themselves.”
There is down right prentension (The Dark Knight) and then there is simply aknowledging something of the outside world. By this ignorant statement you don’t even seem to accept the latter.
Stephen Bowie: you’re right, of course. No way to properly excuse myself, but…in an attempt to meekly defend my unfortunately inserted slight, the offense wasn’t received from an anonymous distance, exactly. There was an unpleasant situation, small but (as I saw it) kind of personal. And I wasn’t in the row behind him. My point was: whether or not this “fat guy” had stature as a critic–whether he was “legit,” and the underlying current within the comments was that no, uh-uh, he was not–is irrelevant to the discussion. Because stature don’t buy graces–many established critics are well-known cranks, jerks, etc. The world of film critics seems, at times, rather short on graces. That’s all.
More importantly, in my opinion, the garlic-cream Ritz crackers are really quite tasty. And the cherry Raisinets? What’s not to love? The food offerings this year actually seem better than usual. Now, excuse me while I Iook on the floor for my standards.
Believe it or not your reviews of films are more interesting then your reviews of film goers.
Or I don’t know you could pick on some poor overeager fat kid for enjoying something.
Stay classy there Glenn.
John M (and I’m not picking on you specifically): I’ve chatted with Jonathan a few times at screenings, and he seems like a reasonably personable individual. But that’s beside the point. One of the sad/ridiculous things about the online film-critic/blogger/fan world is the extent to which it takes people who used to have a reasonable expectation of privacy based on their chosen profession, and subjects them to the kind of public scrutiny that used to only be afforded to philandering politicians or closeted movie stars. I mean, it used to be that you might read Glenn Kenny’s reviews and decide privately that he’s a big fat idiot (hypothetical example), but you couldn’t go on somebody else’s website and quack behind his back that the guy looks like William Conrad. Civility exists on the internet only to the extent to which it’s guarded by technology.
And I guess the corollary to this is that a lot of people ask for it by putting zillions of photos of themselves, or a lot of unsoliticed personal information. And I don’t really understand why – vanity? careerism in the sense that having an “image” rather than just a byline might help you get noticed? This seems to apply to various film bloggers I can think of. It’s also the raison d’être of Facebook, I guess. If THE SOCIAL NETWORK gets at any of that, then yeah, it’s a really important movie.
Boy, Ricardo Cantoral’s just making my life, with his demands and his spelling and his punctuation, and all that. (I know, I know…more “un-welcome sarcasm.” How do I sleep? Well, check it out, I don’t…look at the time on this comment!)
Yes, Stephen, it IS a little soon (I think I actually said so!), and yes, it’s hardly the height of “class” to mock the fat guy. But here’s the thing: I observed it, I had a reaction to it, I had a reaction to and/or a thought about my reaction to it, and, for better or worse, I wrote about it. On MY blog, which is entirely MY responsibility and which I maintain at MY own expense and at MY own pleasure. It isn’t something I would necessarily do in a review for MSN Movies, a feature for the Los Angeles Times, a DVD review for The Daily Notebook…you get the idea. And yes, I understand that my relation of the anecdote reveals certain aspects of my character and my quality of mind that are unattractive, (or, to put it more charitably, are less than fully developed) and that my reasons for sharing such aspects of my character could be seen as an inverted form of self-aggrandizement, and maybe that’s the case, I don’t know; sometimes I put stuff up here just to see what it looks like. But in any event, no, Stephen, I won’t try an attempt a meta-narrative-forming defense, although your spadework for one is rather admirable. And yeah, I am on Facebook, and I do have a buncha pictures of myself up there, and every time I try to get off I get sucked in with a sweet request from a dear young relative, or something. Helas. Anyway, it did help me get a paying gig once, so it’s been kind of useful.
As for Jonathan, I actually consider him a friend (albeit one I hardly ever see), so I should have been quicker to defend him, but the truth is, he can be a little bit of a tough nut when first encountered, and I think he might know that, and he has to live with that. Just as I have to live with my own pettiness, adolescent sense of humor, tendency to “overshare,” and with guys who come on to my blog and DEMAND that I back up my audacious claims, or else they’re just gonna call me ignorant and stuff. To whom I have to work really hard NOT to quote that line from “Glengarry Glen Ross” about what you can do if you don’t like it.
Am I glad I never got into Facebook!
“You think this is abuse, you cocksucker? How can you take the abuse you get on a “sit”? You don’t like it, leave.” – Blake (Alec Baldwin) in GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS
Just raising my zombie-pallid, but acne-free face to look Glenn, Aaron Aradillas, Tom Carson and Stephen Whitty in the eye and say that despite my overwhelming lack of love for the two Finchers I’ve seen–Fight Club and (shudder) Se7en–you have succeeded in making me want to see this movie. And I add, without a hint of sarcasm, that if I come out of The Social Network thinking it’s fit to carry Thelma Ritter’s dustpan, let alone George Sanders’ cane, I will stand you all a round of drinks at the Algonquin, after making sure the butter plate is removed from the table.
“How does Fincher bring the cinema?”
The first time you see this, and most people have only seen it once, you’re mostly concerned with the story, the performances, and, yes, the dialogue, which is brilliant and hilarious. So – “Good character. Good story. Beautifully shot. Well acted. Yay.” Indeed. God forbid.
Is the story partly told in dialogue? Sure it is – as in ‘The Sweet Smell of Success’, which is also a masterpiece of direction and editing. (And deals with interpersonal relationships and questions of ethics in the context of a culturally insignificant phenomenon, the gossip industry.)
Even on first viewing, you do notice that it’s beautifully/expressively lit – not that it’s just nice to look at, but that the lighting tells you about the scene you’re in. Does that sound modest? It shouldn’t. And you notice that it’s impeccably edited – it hits this incredible pace in the first scene, a two-hander, and keeps it up while bringing in more threads, in three distinct times/places. It has a ‘snap’ and precision you do not get in other Sorkin films or shows. And the cast ‘effing kills it’ as I believe they say on message boards.
Other things that stood out as ‘cinematic’ per whoever decides these things: the second major sequence cross-cuts between the film’s protagonist and party scenes that he is sort of embellishing in his mind. The build-up to TheFacebook going online, where the score is particularly impressive, couldn’t be done in any other medium. The Henley sequence. When (SPOILERS) Eduardo comes storming across the office to Mark, the camera is exactly where it ought to be.
Also, @ whoever said “weirdly enough, Facebook and the effect most fear in Facebook (a breakdown of privacy) get brushed over.”
Surely this is the point of the last scene with Rashida Jones, which comes close to breaking the fourth wall. And, in part, of Rooney Mara’s character?
@Aaron – I was thinking “You don’t like, Dave? There’s the door!” That one’s not quite as harsh as yours, though.
The Siren has never seen ZODIAC?
This question of “caring” about Facebook is interesting. On one level, it’s as much of a non-issue as the question of this or that film’s “significance.” Because THE SOCIAL NETWORK obviously isn’t ABOUT Facebook but about loneliness, as revealed by the legal and emotional conflicts, resentments and class skirmishes among the people involved in Facebook’s creation. Also, by saying “I don’t care about Facebook,” I suppose one is really saying “the Facebook phenomenon holds no interest for me” or “I feel pretty distant from the whole Facebook thing.” Me too, I guess, but I still think it’s a great movie. I’m not terribly interested in ranching or socialite weddings either, but that didn’t stop me from liking THE STALKING MOON and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY.
But there’s another, more interesting component. Many people of a certain age and disposition, and I’m including myself here, do not have Facebook pages and never will, are horrified by their friends’ and loved ones’ tales of acquaintances from long ago popping out of the woodwork, and are given to publicly proclaiming that they’re not on Facebook, a phenomenon in and of itself. Why? Because the idea of relinquishing so much privacy seems unappealing; because communication seems to be working just fine as is (Sorkin said something to that effect in New York Magazine), and because the idea of creating a “profile” seems alien in the extreme. I have no fear that communication will be displaced by “communication,” but I just don’t have the temperament for it.
On the other hand, it’s been very good for my son, and I have many friends who feel comfortable with it, despite the attendant headaches. And I have to admit that I am indebted to Facebook. A couple of months ago, I left my bag with a checkbook and a notebook and some other personal stuff in the back of a cab. After frantic phone calls to the TLC and my bank, I was confronted with the possibility that I would never get it back and went to sleep. I woke up and had an e‑mail from someone who shares my name (no, not the Rachel Maddow guy, although we have communicated in the past) who got a message on his Facebook page from someone who had found my bag, and I got it back that morning (from a very nice young guy who happened to be working on BOARDWALK EMPIRE). Ten years ago, even five years ago, this would not have happened.
On another, final note, what a strange coincidence that Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million to the Newark Public School system just as the film was coming out.
Agreed, Kent. With respect to the loneliness, it’s interesting how that theme is explored relative to the concept of “cool;” how Zuckerberg’s obsessed with cool to the (initial) exclusion of money, and so on. And how it’s as if he can only achieve “coolness” himself via a circumscribed virtual world of his own making. This may seem like a small thing in and of itself, but it points to some things that are a lot bigger.
The cool/money opposition is very interesting, within and without the film. I think it comes to a head with that remarkable scene in the club where Sean Parker talks Zuckerberg through his multi-billion dollar future above the bass-heavy music, lit like Mephistopheles and mixed at real club levels.
I think the important thing is that these guys like to portray themselves as “accidental billionaires,” as in Mezrich’s (not so great) book. Like, “We’re visionaries with an interest in paving the way to new horizons of connectivity, and look at all this money being dumped into our laps as a result.” It’s a narrative that doesn’t have much traction left, except in Vanity Fair (which ran a story about Sean Parker-as-wonder boy who happens to have a multi-million dollar apartment with indoor lawns). Meanwhile, as my girlfriend points out, Zuckerberg’s well-publicized $100 million gift to Newark’s school system is actually a matching grant.
As a point of interest, the real “Winklevii” attended the NYFF opening festivities. They were fairly happy with the movie.
I’m really looking forward to “The Social Network”, which, from what I gather, seems to be closer in spirit to “Zodiac” (a film I really loved) than to “Benjamin Button” (not so much). I also don’t go along with the notion that Facebook is somehow an unworthy subject for a film. I kinda think you can make a movie about anything, as long as it’s done in an interesting way.
That said, I’m not on Facebook, and don’t find the whole phenomenon terribly compelling. I agree it can definitely have some practical, utilitarian functions, but, from my observation of friends, it can also be a giant waste of time (and I don’t say that in a superior way, rather as someone who is highly susceptible to time-wasters himself). And, in some ways, I think it enables people’s tendencies to narcissism and self-regard.
Many thanks to Kent Jones for bringing rationality and clarity to an issue as usual:
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“This question of “caring” about Facebook is interesting. On one level, it’s as much of a non-issue as the question of this or that film’s “significance.” Because THE SOCIAL NETWORK obviously isn’t ABOUT Facebook but about loneliness, as revealed by the legal and emotional conflicts, resentments and class skirmishes among the people involved in Facebook’s creation. Also, by saying “I don’t care about Facebook,” I suppose one is really saying “the Facebook phenomenon holds no interest for me” or “I feel pretty distant from the whole Facebook thing.” Me too, I guess, but I still think it’s a great movie. I’m not terribly interested in ranching or socialite weddings either, but that didn’t stop me from liking THE STALKING MOON and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY.”
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This should negate all of the ridiculous comments which basically imply “I find the Facebook application silly and useless, therefore a movie in which the plot nominally revolves around this application’s creation is also silly and useless. The talented filmmakers certainly can’t say anything about loneliness, isolation, communication, or society, because…I don’t like Facebook.”
Plenty of folks who find no real value in Facebook find a lot of value in this film. To further Kent’s analogy, I absolutely hate the very idea of gossip and “society” newspaper columns, yet Sweet Smell of Success is one of my favorite films. That’s probably because while it is “about” something I detest, it is also skewering something I detest. All evidence points to the fact that Fincher and Sorkin don’t have any use for Facebook themselves.
This particular argument about why the movie can’t be good and the complainer will never see it is completely irrelevant. It’s really just a chance for people to declare to others “I am so beyond all of that stupid Facebook shit. It’s beneath me.” No one cares. It’s beside the point.
@The Siren: If you’ve only seen SE7EN and FIGHT CLUB, then you owe it to yourself to see ZODIAC. I picked it as the best film of the last 10 years, a crowning achievement that also marked a major breakthrough in Fincher’s filmmaking.
Why can’t the greatness of THE SOICAL NETWORK be that it is quite simply an amazingly entertaining movie? Fincher has repeatedly mentioned THE PAPER CHASE when talking about this movie. That’s a great American movie that isn’t exactly drenched in “importance.” The same for another Fincher favorite, THE STING.
Facebook is to THE SOCIAL NETWORK as journalism is to CITIZEN KANE. Zuckerberg’s life isn’t wasted on proving everyone else wrong. Hell, his life’s journey is just starting. (There are more echoes of KANE in VANILLA SKY than in THE SOCIAL NETWORK.) The Mark Zuckerberg of THE SOCIAL NETWORK could’ve easily had invented an everlasting lightbulb and the movie would play more or less the same.
Someone on this thread complained that the final act of the movie kind of fizzled. Well, it does and it doesn’t. The conclusion follows the events to their logical ends. It doesn’t have the slow-clap-all-the-bad-people-get-punished ending of, say, SCENT OF A WOMAN. The closing-credits updates on what happened TO THE KEY PLAYERS basically informs us that everyone more or less got what they wanted.
At its most basic level THE SOCIAL NETWORK is one of the greatest coming-of-age movies. You see Zuckerberg mature in scenes like the one where he tells Sean Parker “You didn’t have to be that hard on him.” The final image of Mark hitting refresh is no different if he was waiting by the phone, hoping it will ring. (The lyrics to the closing-credit song provide a nice, almost bittersweet button to the movie.)
I’m told Facebook is a CIA plot to steal our freedoms. If only Fincher and Sorkin had thought to include that, we’d have metaphors out the wazoo.
“You think this is abuse, you cocksucker? How can you take the abuse you get on a “sit”? You don’t like it, leave.” – Blake (Alec Baldwin) in GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS”
How little that offends me. Good thing I am not that insecure.
I am sorry I invaded what you proudly declare the personal territory of your stupidity Mr. Kenny. Next time I’ll simply comment on your vacant reviews that have been published elsewhere.
‘Also, @ whoever said “weirdly enough, Facebook and the effect most fear in Facebook (a breakdown of privacy) get brushed over.“ ‘
Speaking of weird things on the internet. A direct quote cut and pasted, but the cutter-paster can’t be bothered to repeat the name of the writer. A kind of forced casualness. For further reference, Enrique, the names of commenters lie just below their comments.
And yes, I understand the utility of Rooney Mara’s character–indeed, one could say her place in the film is TOO baldly functional–but I’m not sure it does much beyond expressing the everyday compromises of using the internet. It certainly didn’t get me thinking about how Mark Zuckerberg would, when all is said and done, according to a profile I read of him, much enjoy a world in which privacy more or less evaporates. That’s perhaps a topic too far for this telling.
“Someone on this thread complained that the final act of the movie kind of fizzled.”
I hadn’t read this yet. Now I’m laughing. Jeesh, maybe I need a more memorable name. Is it that hard to look?
But you’re right, PERSON WHOSE NAME IS AARON ARADILLAS, I was really hoping for an ending closer to that in Scent of a Woman. Precisely what I was saying–isn’t it obvious?
No, but really, I still feel like the ending felt stunted. Perhaps it’s the only natural ending for this story (and IS the real ending of the story, give or take a few details), and I get that Zuckerberg, a fairly powerful robotic presence throughout the film (simultaneously seeming older and younger than he is), reverts to an everyday, desperate user of his own product with that constant refreshing. It was a very smart gesture.
But it still felt oddly abrupt, maybe even routine. The inevitable tying up of various depositions, the inevitable title cards telling us where they are now, the inevitable trenchant moral delivered by an onlooker (Rashida Jones), the inevitable revisiting of the humble past through an everyday conduit (Rooney Mara). These aren’t easy things to tie up for a dramatist, and Sorkin does it just about masterfully. But when I think about ZODIAC, a movie that seems to change and grow with each viewing, or even BENJAMIN BUTTON with its haunting echoes, I can’t help but see this as a slightly narrower project, very neat and smart but also kind of pre-digested.
And yet still, shit, I loved it. It’s superbly crafted. And I’m gonna jump at the chance to see it again.
“It certainly didn’t get me thinking about how Mark Zuckerberg would, when all is said and done, according to a profile I read of him, much enjoy a world in which privacy more or less evaporates.”
SPOILERS FOLLOW!
At the end of the film, Zuckerberg is advised to settle with Saverin and the Winklevi because – says the-lawyer-played-by-Rashida-Jones – he’d be humiliated in court. All types of stuff would come out. Pay up and move on. You can afford it. And we see from the title cards that that’s what he did.
But that’s at the end of a film filled with quite a lot of personal stuff, i.e. actual blog posts that he made. All that embarrassing information came out anyway. Because of the death of privacy. Lil dash of irony.
So if it didn’t get you thinking about privacy, OK, but I think it adequately addressed the issue without labouring it.
I thought Mara was great in the first scene – and what a first scene. In the end, everyone’s a little functional.
(I c+p’d the line I wanted to discuss, but couldn’t be bothered to open another window to go to the previous page to find your name. Completely unforced casualness.)
Not just that he’d be humiliated in court with personal skeletons…he’d be unsympathetic on a very basic level of personality. Because he’s an asshole. Which seems to be a major point of the film–this guy is an anti-social asshole who wouldn’t know what to do with a friend even if he made one.
And again, got the privacy bit at the end. But one of the concepts that drives Zuckerberg is a COMPLETE breaking down of privacy–it’s almost a new-age mantra to him, very much what drives his thought process. This could’ve perhaps been explored with more depth if the structure of the film hadn’t so meticulously wagged after the legal wrangling of Facebook’s creation. We spend a lot of time in those deposition rooms. It’s very entertaining, but…I don’t know, maybe I just don’t care for trial movies.
And yes, maybe I’m making a weird argument–I’m talking about a movie that’s not the movie I watched. But this is the way they chose to frame it. Is it because I’m getting possessive about Fincher? BUTTON and ZODIAC are two fo the very small group of movies Hollywood has produced that have really stuck around in my brain. And now I’m hoping his next project will surpass the previous one, and again and again, and it’s not a fair position. And I’m not sure he could pick a more closed-off object for his next project than an adaptation of a novel everyone and their uncle has read.
I can’t even focus on the unwarranted abuse of our talented and, at this point, pretty goddamn long-suffering host anymore. I’m just sulking over all the peer pressure to see ZODIAC. I say I’m gonna cave on The Social Network but is that good enough? Nooooo.
Seriously, I do realize I need to see Zodiac. Filmbrain liked it too, as I recall…
Siren – No pressure from me, just surprise. I’ll just say that the film came as a shock to this viewer. And if you’re imagining that it’s a sequel to or continuation of SE7EN…it’s not. At all.
Glenn, I liked FILM SOCIALISME very much and I’m sure I’ll like CERTIFIED COPY, but I’m not sure I agree that Fincher’s movie is any less complex – just complex in a different way.
As for your unwarranted abuse, those charming individuals who come looking for a fight and then walk away in a huff when they get one is a curious internet phenomenon. Comes with the territory, I guess, but that doesn’t make it any less tiresome.
Agreed, Kent…“Network” is one of those films whose complexities are both right there, and which also grow on reflection, for sure—the review by my friend Tony Dayoub really captures this, I think (http://www.cinemaviewfinder.com/2010/09/nyff10-opening-night-movie-review.html#more). It might have been more apt to say that “Network“ ‘s immediate pleasures are such that the complexities don’t have any kind of potential alienation effect, as they would in the Godard film. As they would in quite a few Godard films, as we know from the reaction some of them get…
Well, Fincher’s films certainly do illustrate the difference between what’s on the page and what’s on the screen. I think it’s possible to laugh your way through the movie at all the tangy dialogue (i.e. immediate pleasures) – Larry Summers telling his secretary to punch him in the face, Zuckerberg asking the Harvard IT guy to thank him for shutting down the network and thus pointing out flaws in the system, Caribbean night at the Jewish frat, and so on. And doing so might just obscure the precise tone of every scene, the attention paid to the way every last person in that room where Zuckerberg faces disciplinary action is sitting, for instance, or the glaring hum of florescent lights on the soundtrack, or Zuckerberg’s emotional dissociation. In the Mark Harris New York piece, they talk about the opening scene, and the time devoted to the staging of the background action behind Eisenberg and Mara. That’s the difference between a good director and a mediocre one, who would let someone else worry about the background or tell the AD to tell the extras to look busy or something. No one’s going to pay attention to what’s going on in the background, but there is a reason that it feels like a real Cambridge/Boston college bar. And the dialogue is great, but so is the tightly coiled tension within the rhythm in which it’s delivered.
But he doesn’t just illustrate what’s in the script, he actually finds values that are hidden or at least latent – he teases out the undercurrents and lets them guide the action. The sad bewilderment of very young people caught in endless short cycles of resentment and envy and hurt – it’s between the words. I think that’s one of the many things that makes Fincher a great director.
I’m always amazed the way seemingly random lines of dialogue reveal themselves as being profound statements of the themes in a given Fincher movie.
I remember being thunderstruck by a line of dialogue in the scene in ZODIAC where Bill Armstrong picks up Dave Toschi in the middle of the night to go to the taxicab killing. Armstron asks Toschi if he’s ever had Japanese food. At one point Toschi asks Armstrong why he hasn’t tried it and Armstrong says something to the effect, “I just haven’t had the time.”
For me, that line speaks to the way dedication to one’s work can prevent you from experiencing other aspects of life. Armstrong learns this and walks away. Toschi eventually learns this. Paul Avery lears=ns this too late in life. It seems Greysmith never learns this.
“But when I think about ZODIAC, a movie that seems to change and grow with each viewing, or even BENJAMIN BUTTON with its haunting echoes, I can’t help but see this as a slightly narrower project, very neat and smart but also kind of pre-digested.”
That’s my feeling, unfortunately. Well, I wouldn’t agree with the part about BUTTON.