The Social Network

"Saving Facebook" ("Every Creation-Myth Needs a Devil")
or
"There's Somethin' Happenin' Here (What It Is Ain't Exactly Clear)"

"O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beautious mankind is!
O brave new world,
That has such people in't!" (The Tempest, Act V, Scene 1)

Maybe it is too early to make a movie about Facebook (out of MySpace and Friendster) and the ramifications of our Brave New World of cyber-relationships.*  Maybe it is a little too "street-corner sage" to predict The End of the World As We are Sorta Familiar With it (But Not Really...More Acquaintances, Really).  But, it is interesting to see a story about the Frankenstein behind the Monster, if only to see how each reflects the other.

And even though we're secretly rooting for The Monster.

And, at this point in time, there isn't a better team to make "The Social Network" than Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher.  Sorkin, the mad savant behind some of the better TV shows of the past decade and a half, has always written about people and their "issues," and how personality impacts policy.  Fincher has matured from an ILM tech (who was happy to fly cameras through coffee-maker grips**) to an intricate observer of societal pressures on the psyche.  For the two of them to make this particular story is a Friend Invitation made in Hollywood Heaven.  "Accept" it.  But, you can't "Ignore" it.

The movie begins with a date going badly between Jeff Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg, late of many movies with "...land" in the title) Harvard wall-flower, and Erica Albright (Rooney Mara—she'll play Lisbeth Salander opposite Daniel Craig in Fincher's big-budget version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"), an acquaintance.  Anyone familiar with the machine-gun dialogue that writer Sorkin is known for, had better duck for cover—or wait for this on DVD so you can...play...it...slooooowly—for he now has an automatic weapon for a word-processor, and a co-conspirator in Eisenberg who can milk every nuance out of a line, despite hyperventilating it at debate-competition speed.  His Zuckerberg is a "no Dolby/no squelch" type of unreadable conscience, and Eisenberg plays it with a deadness behind the eyes that interprets the world as a problem, if not necessarily a challenge.  He's a bit too candid for a first date, and she stomps off, which sends him on a mission, simultaneously trashing her on his blog (LiveJournal) and culling the pictures of every woman on campus to create a "Who's Hotter" web-competition that becomes so popular so instantly that it crashes Harvard's web-infrastructure.  He becomes both famous and infamous for the stunt, guaranteeing he'll never get a date in college, and attracting the wrath of the college's board, and the interest of two preppies attempting to create an exclusionary social network on the web.  He goes them several steps better, making a system open to everyone on campus that trumps their attempts, and as it gains "friends," expands throughout the college system.

Hindsight is 20/20, and Sorkin constructs the film as a series of depositions after the fact (of Facebook's success) as everyone who thinks they've been burned by Zuckerberg testifies to his vague promises and dealings under the table. *** Of course, they have every right to sue—but they'd only sue if "The Facebook" was a success—and the underpinnings and double-dealings don't resemble a fight for satisfaction, or a Noble Quest, so much as resembling a snake eating its own tail. ****

Which brings us back to Frankenstein and his Monster.  The film itself is expertly done—it is a complicated story of hidden motivations and the presentation of masks before public faces—and Sorkin and Fincher manage to navigate us through the maze of the story, even though one feels there is no cheese at the end.  The experience is a bit hollow, which may be a part of the point.

Because the Facebook experience is hollow, as well.  As hollow as Zuckerberg, as portrayed in this film, is.  While it is nice that one has the opportunity to "re-connect" with old friends in a virtual environment and satisfy everyone's need to (as one friend commented on blogging) "talk about what you had for lunch," one wonders why one has to re-connect at all...especially if the relationship wasn't maintained in the first place.  Not enough time in the world to meet?  Because a "real" relationship takes time, takes effort, "gets messy?"  Facebook provides the illusion of "staying in touch," without actually touching.  Like Zuckerberg's abortive "date," a lot of time is spent broadcasting, but not interacting.  There are, of course, exceptions.  But the fact of the matter is Facebook's cyber-community is not a "Brave New World" at all.  Just the opposite.  It provides a substitute in lieu of commitment.  A panacea in a life thought to be full to bursting and without risk.  The most precious commodity we can give is time—slices of our lives and our selves.  Facebook is a pacifier—a mass-Hallmark card that we can spend a few heart-beats picking out, and send away without a thought and not even sweat the cost of a stamp.

It soon becomes a numbers game—a collection, like the celebration of the 1,000,000th friend portrayed in the film.  But who are those million people?  Facebook doesn't know or care.  It's just a number.  A number of casual relationships, that may lead to something else, but probably won't.  A collection, nice to look at, but more often, ignored.  Trophies, and ones that don't need to be polished or buffed up.

It's a new world of blithely arrested development, in the image of its creator, where love and commitment do not compute, and the only thing close to it is "hope"—translatable as keystroke F5.

"The Social Network" is a self-fulfilling Matinee.  Take a date. *****

* And by the way, Aria, Ridley Scott does bloody well "bury the lead" in "Blade Runner" by insisting that Deckard is a replicant! Nyeeeah! :P

** Except for some dodgy freezing breath-work, the biggest special effect will be invisibe to you until the closing credits.  Nice.

*** Personally, I'd like to get back all those hours spent on "ZooWorld."

**** An image that kept coming to mind every time I thought of writing this review, where it would subsequently be published...on LNTAM's Facebook page.

***** You won't have to interact during it, either.  

David Fincher Directs for Nike

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

"...I'm Younger Than That Now"

Roger Ebert once wrote that "No good movie is depressing; all bad movies are depressing."

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"is such a fine film, it's painful to watch. Part of that has to do with the central conceit (and this is a conceit, as opposed to a premise) from the originalF. Scott Fitzgerald short story of a man who is born old and dies as an infant. One suspects that Fitzgerald was reaching to show the arc of a life in stark contrast to the norm, and how similar to the norm that extreme is ("We all end up in diapers," says his life-partner Daisy...another Fitzgerald Daisy), But Button's life, if anything, is even more tragic for it. When he shows up late in the film, after an extended leave-taking he's told "You're so young." "Only on the outside" is his quiet reply. It's the perfect riposte to that old saw "Youth is wasted on the young."

One worried when approaching this movie that it would be a "Forrest Gump" situation, where the technology would call attention to itself, and the story would be another collection of paint-by-numbers history awash in the easy sentimentality of the simple-profound. I wasn't a big fan of "Forrest Gump," and watched its clumsy march to a Best Picture Oscar with a certain bemusement.

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is nothing like that (even though it shares a screenwriter, Eric Roth). While director David Fincher came from the special effects area of film-making, he has now long moved past the days when he would pass the camera through the handle of a coffee pot, and uses the technology at his disposal to create invisible wonders throughout the film. It may come as a shock that during the first 30 minutes of "Benjamin Button" the character is a seamless merger of Brad Pitt's heavily-made up head and another actor's body. Another thing they say is that a good movie takes some kind of a miracle. This film brings about miracles every few minutes. And Fincher's rigorous direction is assured and formal, juggling the demands of the effects work with the very real human drama of lives that pass in the night. This film has been in development for a long time. Usually that means trouble. in this one, it must have been logistics.

Fincher's moments of magic include a dead-on recreation of old-film look* that has a amazing pay-off for a running joke that wouldn't be nearly as hilarious if it wasn't done as a series of silent movies. I've already talked about the invisible technology behind Button's early/elderly years, but that same CG magic puts Cate Blanchett's face on a prima ballerina and ages or de-ages the principles. It was Red Barber who said that God doesn't count the toys accumulated at the end of a life, He counts the scars. No movie has been so careful as to keep a running track of the lines in a face...or the scars. And when that "only on the outside" moment happens, the face we see is that of Brad Pitt circa "A River Runs Through It." I don't know how they did it. It's amazing. As it must be for the people in the movie.

Let's talk about the actors now. Cate Blanchett is a given. She weaves through the movie note-perfect, putting the stages of a life out there to be remembered--the naivete, the coltish confidence, the iron strength necessary for healing. Tilda Swinton is there, though her part isn't as rich as Blanchett's, but she makes an impression. Julia Ormond is there, as Daisy's daughter, perfectly American with just a twinge of her French accent creeping in, as her character hails from Louisiana. And Brad Pitt, who's always seemed to me to be a slightly limited actor, proves himself as adept as Blanchett in showing the arc of a life--but in reverse: playing an innocent in old age make-up, but as he gets younger--the eyes get older and wiser. This and his hilarious work in "Burn After Reading" shows that Pitt has moved beyond depending on a slightly ethereal quality to suggest depth. There is a scene where Button is informed by Daisy that she's pregnant and the response from Pitt is a wordless mixture of love and pity.

But, my favorite performer is someone who delights me every time she's on-screen. I've talked about her before. The moment Taraji P. Henson turns up, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" turns into a different movie. She does the same thing as Pitt and Blanchett, but you see her less, and she creates more of an impression than either of them. Her Queenie is a force of Nature, and Henson gives you the impression she's making it all up as she goes. In a film of fine performances, her's stands out.

Finally, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," finds its place as one of those rare films that takes a middling book by a writer of some note, and turns it into a classic film, far surpassing the meager accomplishments of its source.

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a full-price ticket and may very well be the best film of the year.

* Towards the end of the film, I noticed a scratch running down the left quadrant of the film and wondered if Fincher was doing that deliberately!