THE SOCIAL NETWORK
This will seem like a very half glass half empty kind of recap, and I'll just say that I consider this spot in the countdown the cutoff... the top 6 films coming soon really excel in beautiful unique ways and have very few faults. This comes close, but... let's say if The Social Network was a Facebook friend... I wouldn't be taking EVERY opportunity to "Like" its status updates.
Isn't that clever?
Anyway, if the awards season momentum means anything it sounds like The Social Network is set to take a lot of prestigious awards. I can even predict that the voters for the Oscar Best Picture, out of a collective ability to not appear too stodgy and very current, could very well vote this to be the Best Picture of the Year.
No doubt it is a sharp picture, very smoothly paced, and has just the right dark touches to have a tone that is a little more contemporary than regular Oscar fare. In fact, with the exception of the director of the King's Speech, all the other Oscar best Director nominees cut their teeth on some of the boldest, coolest cult pictures of the last 15-20 years (Fight Club, Requiem for a Dream, Three Kings, Fargo) and it's great to see these filmmakers as a team be nominated together.
But as I outlined in my original review, there was an element missing in The Social Network, and if it wins a lot of big film awards, the parallels with another Oscar winner from a few years ago, A Beautiful Mind, will become even stronger, and it won't be a welcome comparison. As I remember, shortly after A Beautiful Mind became obvious Oscar bait, it was revealed that much of the storyline of mentally troubled economist John Nash was made up. Not only that, but revealing and true aspects of his life were left out for the sake of creating more drama and sympathy. Did this selective fictionalizing take away from the powerful portrayal of mental illness or the great performances? Not really... but it also creates a picture that just exists on the surface. If there is a lot of truth missed in what is presented as a powerful personal drama of an actual living person, than I have trouble understanding its relevance. In the end, A Beautiful Mind was put together in such a beautiful (and apolitical) package and moved in such grand gestures that it was an obvious Best Picture of the year winner, in similar fashion to other beautifully made but inconsequential winners like the English Patient and Shakespeare in Love.
So of course something based on true events can be highly fictionalized if it creates a better movie. However, in the case of the very relevant, very current, and very ubiquitous world of Facebook, if you are going to exaggerate the characters and dramatize events, you have to make the movie about something more deeper, thematically, than the legal battles of these people whose characterizations are to some degree fabricated. Except for some some fleeting moments, and two excellent scenes opening and ending the movie, there was little insight into how facebook shapes social interactions, what it means to have a whole generation wired to communicate this way, or even any types of broader analysis of the rapid expansion of various tech bubbles and Internet fads. Without enough of those elements (which are compelling to me, personally) all we're left with in The Social Network is a movie that mostly spends time with greedy young eccentrics battling eachother in boardrooms and flashbacks for millions and millions of dollars. How relevant that reductive experience is to me, just as how engaged I am in A Beautiful Mind, depends on how much I believe the "facts" of the story. And recent stories have revealed that Mr. Mark Zuckerberg isn't really that much of a jerk. Maybe all of his minions are doing damage control behind the scenes to improve his image, but I could be forgiving of fictionalized "true" events if the movie relied a little bit less on spending specific personal moments with these characters to tell a story.
All in all, this movie took a different direction that I expected, but was still solid and engaging in its own way. The final thought I have... will it make me feel old or mainstream or both if Trent Reznor wins and accepts an Oscar for Best Dramatic Score?
Isn't that clever?
Anyway, if the awards season momentum means anything it sounds like The Social Network is set to take a lot of prestigious awards. I can even predict that the voters for the Oscar Best Picture, out of a collective ability to not appear too stodgy and very current, could very well vote this to be the Best Picture of the Year.
No doubt it is a sharp picture, very smoothly paced, and has just the right dark touches to have a tone that is a little more contemporary than regular Oscar fare. In fact, with the exception of the director of the King's Speech, all the other Oscar best Director nominees cut their teeth on some of the boldest, coolest cult pictures of the last 15-20 years (Fight Club, Requiem for a Dream, Three Kings, Fargo) and it's great to see these filmmakers as a team be nominated together.
But as I outlined in my original review, there was an element missing in The Social Network, and if it wins a lot of big film awards, the parallels with another Oscar winner from a few years ago, A Beautiful Mind, will become even stronger, and it won't be a welcome comparison. As I remember, shortly after A Beautiful Mind became obvious Oscar bait, it was revealed that much of the storyline of mentally troubled economist John Nash was made up. Not only that, but revealing and true aspects of his life were left out for the sake of creating more drama and sympathy. Did this selective fictionalizing take away from the powerful portrayal of mental illness or the great performances? Not really... but it also creates a picture that just exists on the surface. If there is a lot of truth missed in what is presented as a powerful personal drama of an actual living person, than I have trouble understanding its relevance. In the end, A Beautiful Mind was put together in such a beautiful (and apolitical) package and moved in such grand gestures that it was an obvious Best Picture of the year winner, in similar fashion to other beautifully made but inconsequential winners like the English Patient and Shakespeare in Love.
So of course something based on true events can be highly fictionalized if it creates a better movie. However, in the case of the very relevant, very current, and very ubiquitous world of Facebook, if you are going to exaggerate the characters and dramatize events, you have to make the movie about something more deeper, thematically, than the legal battles of these people whose characterizations are to some degree fabricated. Except for some some fleeting moments, and two excellent scenes opening and ending the movie, there was little insight into how facebook shapes social interactions, what it means to have a whole generation wired to communicate this way, or even any types of broader analysis of the rapid expansion of various tech bubbles and Internet fads. Without enough of those elements (which are compelling to me, personally) all we're left with in The Social Network is a movie that mostly spends time with greedy young eccentrics battling eachother in boardrooms and flashbacks for millions and millions of dollars. How relevant that reductive experience is to me, just as how engaged I am in A Beautiful Mind, depends on how much I believe the "facts" of the story. And recent stories have revealed that Mr. Mark Zuckerberg isn't really that much of a jerk. Maybe all of his minions are doing damage control behind the scenes to improve his image, but I could be forgiving of fictionalized "true" events if the movie relied a little bit less on spending specific personal moments with these characters to tell a story.
All in all, this movie took a different direction that I expected, but was still solid and engaging in its own way. The final thought I have... will it make me feel old or mainstream or both if Trent Reznor wins and accepts an Oscar for Best Dramatic Score?
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