The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)

[lacritfan]

I am attending a screening of Social Network today with an Aaron Sorkin Q&A. Anything you are dying to have answered?

Are you still on MySpace?

[domino harvey]

"You holding?"

[domino harvey]

Ask him for something clever to say in response to people who say no one talks as cleverly as in Sorkin's work

[Murdoch]

Is the Social Network a film or a movie?

[oldsheperd]

Ask him how that screenplay on Eli Whitney is coming, I think the film is called "The Cotton Network".

[HistoryProf]

"How did you come to write a TV-glib script reduces human relations to a sophomoric power grab."

[mfunk9786]

Does a non-sentence could as a complete question?

[AWA]

I watched this last night - good, but not certainly not great. Seems to be getting most of it's accolades from being people wanting to celebrate something somewhat "topical". But in a few years time it might seem as dated as the praise for the "Eve Of Destruction" type singles in the 60's - really, really set in it's time period.

Hard to watch a film about "my generation" making it's way up the social / economic ladder. The children of the Greedy 80's are growing up to be even more dangerous than the yuppies of that decade... all the self absorbtion, irony, hyper-informalities, passive aggressive non-chalantness of these characters make them seem even more ruthless as anyone who has come before them.

Fincher scratched and clawed his way to a decent film with this, considering the short amount of time covered in the film gives him a very slim premise to work with. Zuckerberg starts off the film as just a kid - and ends it as one as well. There is not a lot of real perspective or emotional arch to work with there - in subsequent decades, who knows, but such a close examination of a young person over such a short period of time doesn't reveal much or give the film much tension. We know who this guy is right off the bat and we know not to expect much to change judging from the editing back and forth between the formation of the website and the testimonies / questioning. It becomes more of a connect the dots type of affair on how Zuckerberg became successful and reviled by his former friends, and once they're connected, character wise at least, it is about as amusing as the picture of Porky Pig tipping his cap those old connect the dot drawings had - something you knew you were going to end up with, no surprise at all.

Also - just as a side note - was it just me or was I seeing CGI breath in the cold scenes? All of that cold breath looked extremely fake to me - can't help but think that was a post add on. In some scenes you can clearly see it coming from some characters, but characters in the distance do not have the breath showing up - until there is a close up of them, then they do. Maybe it's just unusual or too apparent... or maybe my CGI hatred is making me paranoid. I can't tell for sure, but I sure thought so.

[knives]

It was CGI. Like most Fincher films there was a lot of post work done. I think it's Garfield who talks about in one of the commentaries.

[JesusoFmonteVideo]

I've only just realized that 'The Social Network' box cover is almost an exact replica of 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' box cover...w/ the obvious exceptions, of course. An implication, I guess? Know they didn't think they could get away w/ it...

[Guido]

Both were designed by Mr. Kellerhouse

[aox]

The Social Network became streamable this month on Netflix, so I revisited it today. I can't believe it has been ten years (and this thread has been dormant for nearly as long considering the Fincher enthusiasts we have on this board; myself included). This thread is a good read.

To examine some points brought up in this thread: yes, this film holds up a decade later, especially since we now know how Facebook has helped turn the world completely upside down with revolutions, influencing elections, cyber warfare, and genocide. When I first saw this film, it had already felt that Facebook had peaked in its cultural relevance (I foolishly thought it would be dead and buried by no later than 2015). It was a good story and the film felt like a great cap to an already larger cultural phenomenon which seemed at the time to be at the end of its trajectory (how much story could there be for the largest social media site post 2010?). Looking back now and given the weight of what was to happen in the 2010s, this film seems almost innocent in hindsight leaving the viewer with a weird nostalgia for this time.

I think it was Sausage in this thread who said that this film breezes by, and even though I had seen it previously, I still longed for more after the credits rolled. There's been talk about developing a sequel. While the global events of post-2010 Facebook provide fantastic plot fodder, I would be shocked if Fincher would produce an equal film here (and I don't think it should fall on another director... well, maybe Soderbergh). This is mostly because, as people talk about in this thread, this film doesn't rely solely on the history of Facebook, but Zuckerberg's social ineptitude. Facebook and the biography are merely a device, and that's why I find this movie to be a rather strong entry into Fincher's oeuvre. IMO, that story is completed here.

Has anyone revisited this?

[therewillbeblus]

Not recently, but many times over the years since theatres. I agree with you on its timelessness based on using a fictionalized version of Facebook to tell the story of the existential pains of the social world at the turn of the millennium. I wrote this up the other week in the biopics thread:

The Social Network would undoubtedly place first as the best meditation on how emotional subconscious shapes identity in our era of inescapable social comparison. I believe I've mentioned it somewhere on this forum, but the film functions for me like a more effective Citizen Kane with the most universal Rosebud finale that should strike a chord in anyone who is not immune to personalized nostalgia, and forces an especially raw and vulnerable self-awareness, with sensitive acknowledgement of our isolation and emotional needs for connection and personal validation, as we get swept up in our perceived microscopic significance in a busy world. This is an exhibition on ubiquitous social-emotional experience that is disguised as a biopic, used as a platform, and still the reigning champ at turning the specific into the panoramic.

Sorkin’s meaty script and Fincher’s smooth direction also make this one of the most digestible narratives in any film. Outside of the flooring thematic content it’s just a euphoric cinematic ride.

[flyonthewall2983]

Even if the movie took liberties with why he created Facebook, the congress testimony exposed Zuckerberg a little as closer to it's interpretation of his character.

[Nasir007]

Interesting read about why the movie has aged so poorly and gets Facebook and Zuckerburg completely wrong.

I haven't seen the film since it first came out (and honestly have no interest) but I can believe it aged poorly, it aged poorly a week after I had seen it a decade ago. Even then I thought the film wasn't all it was cracked up to be. An interesting and good film but grotesquely overrated.

I'd disagree with the writer on point though - the depth of FB's depravity wasn't known in 2010. We nearly had no way of knowing it would be the cancer on humanity that it is today. So I can't agree with her criticism that the movie should have shown us how destructive facebook is. Be that as it may, it is probably the only movie we are likely to get about facebook, unless someone wants to make a supremely upsetting dystopian horror film.

[domino harvey]

Yes, the Social Network, a film still widely considered to be one of the best of the era, “aged poorly“ because it didn’t depict things that hadn’t happened yet

[therewillbeblus]

Interesting read about why the movie has aged so poorly and gets Facebook and Zuckerburg completely wrong.

I haven't seen the film since it first came out (and honestly have no interest) but I can believe it aged poorly, it aged poorly a week after I had seen it a decade ago. Even then I thought the film wasn't all it was cracked up to be. An interesting and good film but grotesquely overrated.

I'd disagree with the writer on point though - the depth of FB's depravity wasn't known in 2010. We nearly had no way of knowing it would be the cancer on humanity that it is today. So I can't agree with her criticism that the movie should have shown us how destructive facebook is. Be that as it may, it is probably the only movie we are likely to get about facebook, unless someone wants to make a supremely upsetting dystopian horror film.

I shouldn't be surprised you took the film literally when its creators have publicly admitted to using creative liberties with the story as a thematic study on 21st century socialization. It's not a film about events, but about universal emotions and how they tragically and ironically drive us farther apart reactively in defensiveness, when all we want and need deep down is to be closer together. But I probably lost you at the word "emotions"

[domino harvey]

He’s now furiously searching Jacobin’s website for keyword “emotions”

[albucat]

I've taught the movie to dozens of freshman over the past decade, and it continues to ring true to them as well. Goddamn it's a good movie.

[therewillbeblus]

That's great to hear, I've said it before but I think it essentially plays as a modern-day Citizen Kane down to the final shot, and is a more resonant, relevant, and better film in my opinion.

[knives]

It’s unquestionably Fincher’s biggest impact with Fight Club detailing a different kind of masculinity. I see young people bring it up often even if only that movie from the JT meme.

[Mr Sausage]

I'm surely not alone in thinking that whether or not it gets the historical Facebook and Zuckerberg correctly is irrelevant to whether or not it's a successful movie. This is such an engrossing and intense character drama that its historical antecedents fade into the background whenever I watch it.

[therewillbeblus]

Coincidentally Sorkin was just interviewed and is ready to write a The Social Network sequel, which was mentioned last year but he’s been working on ideas and seems pretty passionate about it

[Red Screamer]

That's great to hear, I've said it before but I think it essentially plays as a modern-day Citizen Kane down to the final shot, and is a more resonant, relevant, and better film in my opinion.

If only Welles had made a relevant film epitomizing infantile corporate America and all of its collateral damage in the forms of demagoguery, soulless stabs at art and politics, media manipulation, election delegitimization, warmongering, consumer obsessions, psychic violence, and personal desolation.

[therewillbeblus]

Well I never said Welles' film wasn't relevant, resonant, or great. It is all of those things. I used the word "more" and finished with "in my opinion" knowing it's a contentious one. To clarify, it's more relevant to me, subjectively, today- and generation Y's social insecurities and technology's role in evolving them would certainly not have been relevant in the 40s.