Take a look at all that's going on in the image above. Who is talking? What are the relationships between the characters? How much is packed into this one frame?
Since it came out last fall, I'd almost forgotten what an exhilarating information-overload experience David Fincher's "The Social Network" is. Cut and composed and performed with breathless, jittery speed, it's a movie that consists of virtually nothing but conversations in rooms (the attempted, missed, short-circuited, coded connections that struck me when I first saw it). It's action-packed -- enough to give you whiplash, watching all the elements interacting within the 2.40:1 widescreen frame -- even though there are no "action sequences" (car chases, shootouts, fist fights, acrobatic stunts, etc.); the filmmaking is charged with energy without falling back on today's routinely frenetic, handheld run-and-gun/snatch-and-grab camerawork (the camera is generally mounted on a tripod; when it moves, it's on a crane or a dolly -- often for establishing shots or a shift in perspective that brings a new element into the frame). Smart, quick, efficient.
The crunchy guitar riff starts over the Columbia Pictures logo and then the crowd noise comes up, the music drops down, and before the logo fades to black and the first image appears, we hear Mark (Jesse Eisenberg) speaking the movie's opening line -- a question that's also a challenge: "Did you know there are more people with genius IQs living in China than there are people of any kind living in the United States?" What follows is a blisteringly fast-paced screwball comedy exchange ("His Girl Friday" through a 64-bit dual-core processor) between Mark and his girlfriend (not for very much longer ) Erica in which nearly every line is a misunderstanding (intentional or unintentional), a sarcastic jab, a leap of logic, a block, an interruption, a feint, an abrupt shift in the angle of attack, a diversion, a retreat, a refinement, a recapitulation (I'm sure there are many fencing terms that apply to the various conversational strategies employed here)...
The scene offers just a few variations on some simple camera set-ups, deployed at high speed. Erica (Rooney Mara) is always on the left, Mark on the right (even in their individual close-ups they're slightly shifted to those positions in the frame). The cutting is as quick and nervous and aggressive as the dialog, ricocheting from volley to return (and reaction shot to reaction shot). Most edits are right at the end of each character's lines -- there are hardly any pauses between them -- so that the effect is like watching an intense two-camera tennis match, cutting from one side of the net to the other.
Only once after the opening shot does Fincher offer a balanced two-shot, as Erica presents an opportunity to disarm the conversation/confrontation and take it in a neutral direction: "Should we get something to eat?" Superficially, Mark makes a similar counter-offer, but it's really another challenge: "Would you like to talk about something else?" And then we're back to the over-the-shoulder shots (moving into close-ups) as Erica dives back in: "No, it's just since the beginning of the conversation about finals club I think I may have missed a birthday." By the time Mark tries to circle back to this juncture -- "Do you want to get some food?" -- it's too late to recover that balance.
It would be fun to do a line-by-line, shot-by-shot accounting of the dynamics of this scene (or this whole movie), but let's get to the point: The style here is a modern variation on some pretty straightforward, classical Hollywood filmmaking principles, distinguished two things: the velocity at which the scene is performed and cut; and the amount of information packed into the widescreen picture. (The idea of cutting a CinemaScope picture like this -- especially for a simple, two-person dialog scene -- would have been unthinkable until recently. Audiences for early anamorphic pictures in the 1950s and 1960s probably would have thrown up.)
Mark and Erica appear to be the only party of two in the entire pub. And while there's a lot of movement around them (clusters of people drinking and laughing, headless waitresses carrying baskets of food one way and another like potential peace offerings), they remain locked into position -- head to head, but isolated in their separate shots. (He often looks up or down or away, as if Erica's presence is somewhat incidental to whatever he's talking about -- something that will be overtly addressed in a later deposition scene when he deems a lawyer for the opposition to be unworthy of his full attention.)
Erica exits the frame leaving Mark alone at the table just long enough for us to register the awkwardness of the situation for him. He starts to take another sip of his beer, and then decides to just leave. Cue titles. (The fonts themselves seem to mimic the dynamics of the previous scene, with forward movement from the left blocked by the right: JESSE EISENBERG. ANDREW GARFIELD.) This is the first and last time we'll see Mark at loose ends, out of place. He is never entirely alone (or without a network connection), and even when he's in transit he's seen in the context of other pedestrians on- and off-campus, streaming to their destinations like little information packets. Which is what gives the last few seconds of the film -- repeated attempts to re-establish a connection from the first scene -- its irony and poignance.
This sense of a private/public self is reinforced in nearly every scene, with the presence of a video camera (during the depositions), laptops and monitors, or other frames within frames (screens, windows, doorways, stairways, hallways) through which we can see other people going about their lives, doing whatever they're doing. (The extras and bit players had a lot of work in this movie.)
And then there's the guy in the white shirt who sits there behind the Winkelvii's lawyer. He turns out to be the videographer, and he gets one big moment when the attorneys call "lunch" and he leaps up to turn off the camera and the monitor. We're always reminded that what we're seeing is being documented. Even the documentation is being documented: the affidavits that have already been filed, the e-mails and texts that were sent, the blog entries, the Harvard Crimson articles entered into evidence... Whenever Mark tries to claim he doesn't remember what he may or may not have said to Erica or the Winkelvii (Armie Hammer), there's always something there to remind him -- often in words he typed and electronically transmitted himself.
After the opening scene, Mark has very few one-on-one conversations with anybody, except for Eduardo (notably in the cold outside the Jewish frat's "Caribbean Night" party, and in his room), a few short exchanges with Marilyn (Rashida Jones), and with Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) on the mezzanine of the club in San Francisco (in which Sean offers Mark a vision of the future, and the railing by which they're seated becomes a visual metaphor for the danger of missed opportunities and a suicide from the Golden Gate Bridge -- all with a Victora's Secret twist that hearkens back to one of Mark's first blog insults about Erica). At one point Mark tries to get Erica to have a private conversation with him, but she refuses to leave her large restaurant table because, she says, she doesn't want to be rude to her friends -- a pointed reminder of the first scene when she tells him they should "just be friends" and then says she was just being polite; she has no intentions of being friends him. By the end of the movie, of course, being "friends" will have more complex (and ambiguous) meanings. By then, Mark isn't the first guy to attempt to "friend" an old girlfriend in order to find out if she really still hates him -- and to expect (or at least hope for) an immediate answer in real time.
Part of the visual strategy (and joy) of "The Social Network" is to convey the "networking" among characters within the frame and between shots -- while rarely placing Mark in the same focal plane as other characters, to emphasize his alienation even (or especially) when others are around him. So, for example, as Mark is hacking together Facemash, various friends and roomies come and go in the background -- plopping down on beds or the couch, chipping in bits of information (it's Shark Week, we learn), perching barefoot in windowsills... When Eduardo misunderstands Mark (a cleverly revealing character moment for both of them), it's funnier because of the reaction of the drunk guy flopped upside-down, out of focus, behind Mark. He -- or someone -- has been hanging out back there all night:
This is characteristic of the picture that we notice little bits of behavior all over the frame (see my earlier post about the research of David Bordwell's guest-blogger, Tim Smith, "How we really watch a movie"), like the way Mark's lawyer Sy (John Goetz) exchanges looks of consternation or admiration for his client with the opposition lawyers or his associate Marilyn.
We could not have guessed that the movie's final scene would be between a private conversation between Mark and Marilyn (and, of course, Erica, somewhere out there beyond Mark's laptop screen, in Boston or Bosnia), but she has been carefully integrated into the movie's texture -- even though they've had only one previous exchange -- so that the scene, when it comes, resonates.
The same kind of thing happens in the opening scene. Every once in a while, during Mark and Erica's conversation, a little white light appears over her shoulder. We may or may not register that it's a guy using a little flashlight to check IDs as people enter the pub. When Mark makes the fatal mistake of claiming that Erica has slept with "the door guy" and gestures across the room, we realize that Bobby the door guy has been back there all along -- a character in the scene and we didn't even know it.
Another sight gag I love is made exponentially funnier because we register something before it is acknowledged by the characters in the scene. Mark is deposed about a conversation he had with Eduardo (Andrew Garfield) at a Jewish fraternity party. "It was Caribbean Night," he says and we cut to a deadsville social function with Jewish guys on one side of the hall talking about the Asian girls on the other side. On the stage we see a DJ and, behind him, a screen displaying footage of a waterfall. A familiar waterfall. But our attention shifts to the many other priceless touches in the scene that underscore the guys' memories of their painful uncoolness: the steel drum player's yarmulke, Eduardo's goofy straw hat, the disco ball and fog machine. Mark is brought into the frame on an unobtrusive dolly move, as Eduardo turns to talk to his friends (whom we might remember from the Facemash night in Kirkland House). When Mark says he wants to talk with Eduardo outside, he insists he cannot stay inside and look at that loop of Niagra Falls "which has nothing to do with the Caribbean." You can tell from Eduardo's reaction how much he appreciates Mark for observations like that -- the way we treasure our friends' peculiarities or eccentricities because those are so much of what makes them our friends. And we miss them when they're no longer around.
One short segment recapitulates Mark and Erica's argument from the first scene, where he discusses his options for distinguishing himself to get into a final club -- sing in an a cappella group or row crew? Well, he can't do the latter and Erica suggests the former isn't so appealing to her. Later we see Div (Max Minghella) watching an a cappella performance while the girl next to him is checking out something on her laptop. Turns out, it's The Facebook. Div bolts and runs across campus -- Zuckerberg has moved on and left them behind. As he runs across a bridge, a crew shell appears below, going off in another direction... which is exactly what the Winkelvii have been doing. We get this sense of characters' trajectories going this way and that (I didn't expect Wim Wenders moments in this movie). When he drops the news that they've been stymied and outmaneuvered, the Winkelvii are working out in the rowing tank, going nowhere. Dead in the water.
Above: Mark usually has multiple frames -- er, windows -- open on his computers, including at least one terminal for programming.
Above: In a nice little touch, when Mark corrects Marilyn in their first exchange -- it's 22,000, not 2,200 hits in the first two hours of Facemash -- a little ethernet light flashes behind him.
Above: Four characters, each in a different box.
Above: Is this a shot from Jacques Tati's "Playtime"?
UPDATE: (03/01/11): A short piece by John Pavlus, re-tweeted by Gary Hustwit (director of "Helvetica" and "Objectified"), called Why David Fincher Is the Best Design Thinker in Hollywood" -- because, in his films, "form ever follows function":
Calling a director a "designer" is almost a tautology: indeed, anyone making creative choices about what to leave in or leave out, in any medium, is designing. But Fincher's coolly intelligent eye, laserlike attention to detail, and (in his best work) apparent fascination with storytelling as problem-solving, all set him apart from other filmmakers as a true designer-auteur. He makes films like Jony Ive makes iMacs: They just work -- with style to burn.
Take "The Social Network." Fincher has said in interviews that he personally related to Zuckerberg's character: the young punk who thinks he's smarter than everyone else in the room, and actually is. (Makes sense: Fincher was directing Madonna videos when most dudes his age were still playing video games in Mom's basement.) But the film is a classic Fincherian puzzle, too: is it possible to make a film about pasty dorks tapping away on computers into something visual? That's a design problem through and through -- a product-design problem, no less. (That analogy to Ive was no accident.)
61 Comments
Nice breakdown. I like that you can't resist going back to TSN over and over, it's always fun to sift through and find more in.
Surprised that you pointed out the "Shark Week" line and the visual metaphor of the Winkelvii 'dead in the water' but didn't tie the first of those into the fish motif that plays throughout the film; they end up babbling a lot about marlin and trout later in the film, but Mark has already become an aggressive predator ready to swallow anything and everything in this technological 'sea' in the scene where he creates Facemash.
Great post Jim.
Social Network was the best film of last year, without question. Just watched it for the second time recently and loved it all the more.
Your article has made me hungry to see it again.
You've convinced me that it is a thrilling film, and that its form brilliantly conveys its ideas. Any advice on what I can do with the deplorable sense I get that the ideas it conveys are shallow, childish, nihilistic and boring, or that the screenwriter wasn't actually interested in engaging his subject?
I generally love and agree with the idea that a film's form is inseparable from its content...but I keep on being confronted with a disconnect.
Depends on what/who you "blame" for the shallowness and why.
For all of his verbosity, Aaron Sorkin has always been a predictable "thinker" -- his dialogue is dazzling but the exchange of words between characters is always more interesting than the ideas they seem to be exploring. I say this as a HUGE, DIE-HARD fan of Sports Night. He does much better when he leaves the "big social statements" alone and focuses on the intricacies of media production.
The shallowness of TSN, for me, comes from the implicit assumption in the script that Sorkin is saying something unique about this generation of young adults and their toys when he's mostly projecting what a middle-aged upper middle class screenwriter might think of them. Like the "conceit" of having "Zuckerberg" do all of this just for revenge for being dumped. Or the way-too-obvious juxtaposition of having Zuck create this network for "friends" while his own personal relationships fall apart.
Also, TSN explores little to nothing of the actual Facebook phenomenon or the new technological/social/political terrain it creates. It's mostly a very old Hollywood fashioned movie about genius and ego in the style of, yes, Citizen Kane.
The comparisons to Citizen Kane are only merited when Fincher takes Sorkin's prosaic ideas and, as Jim illustrated here, highlights them in the details. I have been annoyed at the cult of Fight Club over the years, but I feel like TSN is the movie that Fight Club wanted to be -- a deep exploration of (male) social rituals/bonds/expectations and how they are both constrictive and constitutive of the (male) ego.
Sorkin's script is best when he tries to explore the ambition towards not just site expansion and profit, but the ineffable "cool" factor that may not have anything to do with those two, particularly in the long-tail economies of the internet. The script is best when he illustrates the competing claims of invention by not allowing the dialogue and scenes to suggest "definitive" truths and just letting everyone pile competing narratives over each other.
Also, I'm curious as to what you find "nihilistic" about TSN. Sorkin (and Fincher) are nothing if not romantics about they consider "real" human interaction (face-to-face as opposed to online -- another one of the film's assumptions that could very well be true IRL but is not interrogated at all in a movie about a type of peer-to-peer technology).
Their treatment of Eduardo Saverin, Erica in her brief time onscreen, even the deeply conflicted portrayal of Zuckerberg by Eisenberg is all testament to what they find sympathetic about this story.
(Apologies for posting twice.)
I wouldn't call Fincher a romantic- which is one of the reasons I find Benjamin Button so moving- it may not really work, but he's trying soooo hard. As for Sorkin, I think he's far too cynical and close-minded over here for the romantic to come out. The treatment of Eduardo and Erica came off as rather corny (weak and simplistic writing, rather than tempermental romanticism), though counter-balanced by the richer depiction of Zuckerberg.
The nihilism I found was in the general theme of Lack of Connection that the film hammers in, particularly with its cold, isolating, score. It presents a bleak world, full of sad, emotionally gray, lonely people, and the score and the triteness of the ending make it feel insular to the degree that it seems impossible to imagine any happiness at all. The film was cold to the bone, aside from the Larry Sommers scene, where something resembling vivaciousness appeared.
I also love that when Dev runs out of the a cappella performance he falls over the chairs. It's a nice little visual to convey that this guy stumbled and was left behind, and even a suggestion that he's a bit of a clown and should not be taken seriously.
When I rewatched the film recently I took special note of the music. The lone piano that accompanies Mark's long walk in the beginning, and how it grows into this electronic symphony (later incorporating a piano that's been distorted as Mark's musical signature). Both of the first scenes where Mark meets Sean are accompanied by massive bass, which simulates the overwhelming stimulus of a rock show.
The one thing I'm not sure about is the use of "Baby You're A Rich Man" at the end. In a lesser movie I would find it too on-the-nose, in terms of the lyrics. I'm not entirely sure why I don't mind it here. I guess the easy answer is that I like the song, and the movie, enough that I can forgive the obviousness of the connection.
Fincher has a penchant for picking songs that are either lyrically or sonically very on the nose, yet somehow they work and they work so well that Fincher tends to elevate the song.
Seven opens with an instrumental version of NIN's "Closer" (and I'd be remiss not to note the clever inclusion of Marvin Gaye's "Trouble Man"). Fight Club closes with the Pixies' "Where is My Mind" (about as on-the-nose as one can get). Zodiac completely perverts Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man," which was already a creepy song to begin with. I suppose the only one that comes to mind that I find too obvious and overworked is "White Rabbit" in The Game.
Anyway, Fincher is great at injecting music into his films that would be painfully obvious in the hands of most directors. He just makes it work.
Strangely, "Baby You're A Rich Man" was always my least favorite Beatles song -- and I've been listening to it since I bought my vinyl copy of Magical Mystery Tour in 1967.
This movie made me hear it in a whole new way. Now I love the prophetic vibe, as though Lennon knew the child billionaires were coming and wanted to welcome them to the top of the hill. It put a big smile on my face as the closing credits rolled. A genius pick to close a brilliant movie.
I wonder if Fincher knew the trivial history of the song and the alleged slur at Beatles' manager Brian Epstein contained in the central lyric.
http://oldies.about.com/od/thebeatlessongs/a/babyrichman.htm
(and various other sources)
It's a bit on-the-nose but I think it's the song itself that earns the right. Just think of the first few lines: "How does it feel to be/One of the beautiful people?/Now that you know who you are/What do you want to be?"
There's a level of exposure of the song that accents the level of exposure those last images of Zuckerberg refreshing the page over...and over....and over...The sound and vision (natch David Bowie) parade the vulnerability of omnipotence (perceived or manifested). In that moment, John Lennon isn't singing to just Mark, it's to us, and our own myths of our place in digital-corporate nation-building. But that's just my own goofy perspective.
This is a great write up Jim. While I like "The King's Speech" and feel that Tom Hooper's Oscar win for Best Director will be beneficial to his career, I feel David Fincher was the more deserving of the nominees. While I already think the movie is quite excellent, you've made me appreciate the film even more by pointing out little visual flourishes and metaphors I missed, including the railing in the Mark and Sean exchange. It's quite a haunting image when I think about it. The "dead in the water" analogy is also apt.
Brilliant comments, Jim, although you forgot that Mark is alone at the end of the film, when he's trying to friend Erica. (At least, I seem to remember he is. He ought to be.)
I like to think that fifty years from now, people will look back on this film and shake their heads, wondering why it didn't win Best Picture. And an elderly Mark Zuckerberg will wish he'd torpedoed it before it was too late.
Marilyn walks out of the room (the shot above where she's opening the glass door) and then we cut back inside and see her leaving through a door at the end of the hallway behind Mark. You're right -- he's left alone for just a moment. And then he pulls up Erica's Facebook page...
Can I point out what I think is the only false moment in the film - the writing of the algorithm on the window in white ink?
It's only done so that you can frame a deep 3 shot, with the numbers foreground. It's elegant, but it only exists for the camera - and it was identically used in Beautiful Mind. Being such a well made film they attempted to turn it into foreshadowing by making it a punchline of a later comment in the disciplinary meeting "you only had to look at my dorm window". But the dorm window is off the ground, the numbers just a few inches tall.
Great film though.
"Whenever Mark tries to claim he doesn't remember what he may or may not have said to Erica or the Winkelvii, there's always something there to remind him -- often in words he typed and electronically transmitted himself."
This itself could be a comment on the headlines Facebook has made as a public record of personal thoughts or activitie, eg. folks have been fired or passed over for jobs because of comments they themselves posted on Facebook. In the end, we are to ourselves, much like Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, as much friend as foe.
Above: In a nice little touch, when Mark corrects Marilyn in their first exchange -- it's 22,000, not 2,200 hits in the first two hours of Facemash -- a little ethernet light flashes behind him.
Isn't that more of a happy accident? How can that be timed anyway?
Oh, it probably was a happy accident during the filming, but Fincher takes a lot of takes, so it's likely there were a few of this particular moment he liked, and the one with the ethernet light jumped out at him and his editors.
Who says it isn't CGI?
Great point.
C'mon that can be very easily timed. Remember -- it doesn't have to be a real working computer. It could just be the shell of a computer with someone pressing a button so that a light comes on in the middle of Eisenberg's line. Its all in the illusion.
Can I point out what I think is the only false moment in the film - the writing of the algorithm on the window in white ink?
It's only done so that you can frame a deep 3 shot, with the numbers foreground. It's elegant, but it only exists for the camera - and it was identically used in Beautiful Mind. Being such a well made film they attempted to turn it into foreshadowing by making it a punchline of a later comment in the disciplinary meeting "you only had to look at my dorm window". But the dorm window is off the ground, the numbers just a few inches tall.
Great film though.
I disagree. As a current college student, I love using dry erase markers to work out math problems. I generally use the dry erase board in my quad, but when it isn't available, I use the window.
What a great, close reading of the film's details, Jim. A perfectly timed reminder of why and how this is the best directed film of last year.
I especially enjoyed your notes on Dev's run to the Winkelvii (I will NEVER tire of that pluralization!) after his discovery of The Facebook. I hadn't connected the dots back to the opening nor considered the Winkelvii as being stuck in place. Great reading of the sequence. Might I also add that this sequence plays as a parallel to the opening in another way as well: Mark has broken up with Dev and the Winkelvii only this is the first time they've become aware of it (this time it is Dev who is shown bolting across campus). Where Emily was direct and in-person in her breakup, Mark is passive and ploying in his while using the computer interface as a shield to hide his true face behind. This is one of the outcomes of social media like Facebook and texting: an increase in passive-aggressive behavior and the ability to interact (or dictate limited interaction that may seem otherwise) without ever actually seeing or hearing the person on the other end of the line.
An excellent point, Jason, about how the film points to Facebook's (and maybe Zuckerberg's) inherently passive-aggressive communication style.
Nice work, Jim. The Social Network has been easily dismissed as lightweight entertainment by a lot of medias outside the U.S., and by a lot of the audience as well. Its complexity is hidden by its own entertainment factor, like an action movie that's too exciting to be considered art.
The only thing I would disagree on is the character of Marilyn, which I found a little too hastily sketched to become interesting, and I found it a little weird, even unrealistic, that she would pay any attention to Mark's feelings in those two scenes.
Technically, though, and thematically, it's pretty much irreproachable.
Another great job here, Jim! Not until I re-watched this film again did I begin to notice all of the little touches that are placed perfectly about. Thanks for pointing out all of this!
Great observations. I'd say that all of these touches of great, detailed filmmaking is what made the movie so good. Fincher really should have won. All of the movie's fundamental weaknesses were really the fault of Sorkin's glib and simplistic screenplay, in my opinion.
Great analysis, Jim. One thing that continues to mystify me about this film is the comparison to Rashomon by the media, Sorkin, and Fincher himself. I suppose they're trying to say that the deposition scenes in which people contradict and disagree with each other resemble the narrative framing device of Rashomon, where at a trial different characters tell their version of story. But the real central conceit of Rashomon is to visually retell the exact same event over and over from different points of view, with pieces of the event changing depending on who's telling the story. No event in The Social Network is retold visually from a different point of view, and other than Mark saying "That's not what happened" when confronted with Erica's account of their night at the bar, there's no indication that we're supposed to be skeptical of the visual story we're seeing - the events depicted visually never contradict each other or provide substantially different portrayals of the characters and their motivations. And the final scene of the film, with Mark refreshing Erica's page, doesn't really work unless we believe her account of what happened.
All of this makes me wonder if Sorkin has ever actually seen Rashomon, or if he was just name dropping it for the sake of name dropping it. Because when I watched Social Network, I took everything I saw at face value and at no point did it ever seem to be a story about different points of view or different perspectives. Perhaps I'm taking things a bit literally, but I'm curious what others here think about the Rashomon comparisons.
And Zuckerberg is the same character in the deposition scenes as he is in the flashbacks.
"...in which nearly every line is a misunderstanding (intentional or unintentional), a sarcastic jab, a leap of logic, a block, an interruption, a feint, an abrupt shift in the angle of attack, a diversion, a retreat, a refinement, a recapitulation (I'm sure there are many fencing terms that apply to the various conversational strategies employed here)..."
That's an interesting observation, especially considering that Zuckerberg was the captain of his fencing team in highschool, according to Wikipedia.
Such a great piece, made me appreciate the movie a whole lot more. Now I want to watch it again to relive the observations you made. Thank you.
Great post, Mr. Emerson. The Social Network is a lot more visually complex a movie than I remembered.
That said, I'm not sure all of the editing is particularly purposeful...I think the moment where Max Minghella stumbles takes something like three cuts, which undermines the slapstick a little bit, I think (compare it to the force of the laptop-smashing at the end).
Yeah, I know what you mean about that moment. I think it's crammed with a little too much business: He slams the girl's laptop closed, starts to leave with it, turns around and gives it back, stumbles and falls, grabs his coat as he gets back up, and runs out of the room. It's an awkward staging of an awkward moment, but I didn't think it was quite funny enough to be drawn out that way. Too many notes! (Seriously, it's a very minor thing, but the moment he sees the site and closes the laptop, we could have just cut to him running across that bridge...)
I haven't seen the film since it came out in October, so I can't say this with much confidence, but I thought that moment was meant to be dramatic, since Divya is watching a choir performance, which he interrupts with his commotion. I guess it depends if the score kicked in at that moment or not, but I can't remember.
I think Rashomon was more explicit in terms of its narrative technique. All the different points of view, to my memory, were quite contradictory. I think this is because the film is more metaphorical than literal. By having the different points of view be so contradictory the film makes the point that finding the definitive truth is difficult and often impossible.
"The Social Network" explores this idea as well, particuarly in relation to whether Mark Zuckerberg is an intellectual thief. I believe what makes "The Social Network" different than "Rashomon" is that the events in The Social Network are shown to us literally and we decide what truth we can extract from them. Mark tells the Winklevii "I'm in" after they ask him to build Harvard Connection. In the following deposition scene, when asked if he "answered in the affirmative," Mark says "I'd said I help." As an audience we each decide if his "I'm in" can be taken as a basic I'll help. I tend to think it was a lot more.
I feel that with "The Social Network" we are put in the place of the characters from "Rashomon," all coming away with a different perspective and what is the truth.
The Social Network is kind of an anti-Rashomon, no? The actions of the characters and the events in question are never really in doubt; what's in dispute is the intentions and nuances behind the actions and events.
The existence of an electronic record to be mined for information about the past (whether as shown in the movie, or in real life on sites like Facebook) kind of makes Rashomon obsolete. In the present and future, thanks to the digital records, we'll all know exactly what happened without having to rely on hearsay as the guy in Rashomon had to.
My favorite little detail was the sandwich given to Mark during the meeting with the Winkelvii bros. They ask him if he wants one, but there was such a delay between the asking and when he actually got the sandwich that it came as a surprise to me. It's a big sandwich! Mark even looks surprised - 'Where did this come from? Why did they just give this to me? Am I really here?' You can see that his freight train of thought had been broken by the sandwich. He gets back on track quickly, though.
Great post Jim, you've convinced me to give it a second shot on video.
I hope you don't begrudge The King's Speech too much for winning Best Picture over your obvious favorite, to give it a similar treatment someday, since a lot could be made of its composition/cutting scheme.
Re: "The Game"
Speaking of which! Jim, I would love, love, love to hear your opinion on "The Game." I've always found it fascinating, and I like this take on the movie:
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,281643,00.html
I do think it's odd, though, that the reviewer states, "This is the only film I can think of in which your knowledge of the director's oeuvre could affect your perception of the plot." Wait, what?
Anyway, I'm sure the movie could be read as an allegory for something, but I'm not sure what.
"Like the "conceit" of having "Zuckerberg" do all of this just for revenge for being dumped."
I think this a common mis-read of what happens in the film. He posts mean things about Erica on Xanga as revenge. Then he starts to write the Facemash thing, Eduardo comes in and asks him about Erica and he seems to have already forgotten about it and is on to something else asking for the algorithm.
He takes one guys idea about rating/comparing girls, he takes Eduardo's algorithm, he takes the exclusivity idea from the Winklevii and Divya and the relationship status idea from some guy in his class. He's basically a remix artist working in programming. None of these things had to do with revenge or Erica or any such thing. You mentioned Citzen Kane, and I suppose Erica could be like Rosebud in CK, maybe it means something, maybe not, but whatever it means, it's not enough to draw a through line of all that follows with that as the starting point.
"Also, TSN explores little to nothing of the actual Facebook phenomenon or the new technological/social/political terrain it creates."
In this way, TSN is most like another celebrated movie/mini-series from this year, Carlos. Assayas doesn't explore the phenomenon around The Jackal or his infamy/notoriety, he stays focused on the man and his insulated existence.
I (sort of) agree with you, in that the breakup with Erica cannot be seen as the one, single motive behind all of Zuckerberg's actions, but I also don't think you give it enough weight. The picture ends with him at his laptop, refreshing his browser to see if she accepted his friend request.
So I don't think it is a case of "maybe it means something, maybe not".
Hi Jim! I have a totally tangential question for you. In this article you write:
"The crunchy guitar riff starts over the Columbia Pictures logo and then the crowd noise comes up..."
"Crunchy" is an interesting adjective to use to describe a guitar riff. So interesting that I remembered that you've used the word once before to describe music. In this article about the documentary "It Might Get Loud" (http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2008/09/tiff_2008_the_omnivores_dilemm.html) you wrote:
"However, the guy on the right in the published still is The Edge, which immediately turned me off because I can't stomach U2. The guy on the left, however, is Jack White, and I like his crunchy music a lot."
Aha! But the guitar riff that opens "The Social Network" is in fact the opening rift of The White Stripes' "Ball and Biscuit" written and performed by none other than Jack White.
So, my question is this: Do you always pull out the word "crunchy" when talking about White's music, or were you inspired to call both instances crunchy based on the sound alone without realizing you were talking about the same performer?
Anyway, I'm going to go back and read the rest of your article now. I hope you'll answer my question even though it has pretty much nothing to do with what you actually wanted to talk about. Thanks!
Thank you for that information! I was wondering. The riff sounded familiar to me, but I couldn't place it. I didn't realize it was Jack White. It just sounded crunchy to me. I realized I used the same word to describe a set of Bach cantatas on original instruments that I was listening to a couple weeks ago: "crrrrrrrunchy!" Something about the textures and vibrations. Like everyone, I go through phases of favoring certain words or phrases (because they come easily to mind). I'll have to be careful not to overuse this one.
I'd be very curious to read an analysis, in this context, for the compositional style of "The King's Speech," which I finally saw yesterday before the f-words get taken out of it. For all the praise for Tom Hooper's "unobtrusive" style, I found the deliberate "wrong-side-of-the-frame" / "too much headroom" compositions quite glaring, and I don't understand the choice. It's not really the kind of movie that's meant to keep an audience off-balance, and the only possible reason I can come up with is that Hooper didn't want it to LOOK like "Masterpiece Theatre" even if the subject seemed appropriate for it. Clearly, as this article beautifully states, a director is responsible for every bit of visual minutiae we see, and Fincher, to my mind, crammed his movie with DATA, in keeping with the milieu, but I'd love to hear some of Hooper's rationale for the intentional stylization he chose.
Holy cow, I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that! Those improperly framed head shots in The King's Speech were really distracting. Made me mad when I realized this directing style beat Fincher's. What were they thinking?!
Another sneaky thing Fincher does is the inclusion of Mountain Dew cans. I know of two: one in Zuckerberg's mini-fridge before he hits up his blog and one on the deposition table. Before Eduardo sees the Winklevii's (gotta love it) cease-and-desist order, part of their conversation is about monetizing the site to which, and I'm paraphrasing, Mark says he doesn't want thefacebook to be filled with Mountain Dew ads. Kinda similar to Fincher's inclusion of Starbucks cups in Fight Club. There could be more but I haven't seen "The Social Network" in a while. So could one of you illustrious frame grabbers find any more or am I just shooting fish in a barrel?
Well, yeah, OK but I fail to see what all the "gee whiz" is about. Aaron Sorkin wrote 80 of these fast talking, no action, whiz-bang scripts - and they were shot with as much finesse as 'The Social Network' was on a TV show called 'The West Wing'.
Seriously, talking heads as drama? why is this so surprising? Because movie buffs have grown accustomed to multizillion dollar car chases, tsunamis overrunning hotels, buildings exploding across America? 'The West Wing' was easily as staccato, fast paced, dialog driven - and 60 of the 80 Sorkin episodes measure up in every way to 'The Social Network.'
What about the scene where Eduardo and Mark arrive at the apartment after the Bill Gates lecture, Mark disappears into another room while Edurado grabs two beers from the fridge and talks with a wall between them, Mark comes out thru the frame beside the fridge, and grabs a beer, dismissing or not even noticing Eduardo's gesture. I noticed this the second time I saw it on dvd, its like a little introduction of things to come and the reality of their frendship. Simple & neat.
Yes -- it's Mark's room in Kirkland Hall (seen on the Facemash night and in the shot with Eduardo and the chicken above). Eduardo is left with two open beers (he's courteously opened one for Mark) while Mark, clueless, gets his own.
I think that the wall that isolates Mark from everybody is made tangible in that scene. But only because Eduardo is standig in front of it with two beers. If Eduardo were sitting on the couch or in some other place in the room, the metaphor would be lost. We see that wall for only a few seconds. I think there is nothing like it in the entire film. Also, i would like to thank you Mr. Emerson, for your teachings. This obsevation is a product of tour posts.
With respect for you but I must say I hated this movie. I have read Mr. Ebert's review of the movie, I watched twice it and I must say that my opinion hasn't changed: TSN is, at least for me, one of the worst movies of 2010, a ridiculous, simple-minded and boring experience. I don´t want cheap action sequences of commercial movies, because in fact I hate that kind of stuff, but certainly an interesting and intriguing story and development of story, and I didn't see either in the two ocassions I, unfortunately, watch this film. And being reminded of a commentary you [Ebert] did about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a Fincher's film that I enjoyed enormously, that it was filmed with a mistaken premise, I have to say TSN was filmed with a really wrong premise: trying to make the audience feel compasion and interest for a guy who's a jerk and a looser and who never shows any other emotion rather than loath, repression and anger.
Startling how much grammar and punctuation lend to the validity of an argument...
Let's give Iván Christiane Gaitán Fernández some slack. His English (spelling, syntax) is a slight better than my Spanish (and maybe yours?).
I'm pretty sure that's product placement. He could use any brand, really. I think almost all films from major studios have to do product placement.
It's really worthwhile to get the 2 disc collector's version of the movie (I got it for 12$ on Amazon). You get quite a bit of perspective on how it was made on many different levels. There were about 100 takes of each scene, Rashida Jones' assessment of her character being similar to that of the chorus in old Greek dramas that serve as the audience's conscience, etc.
One of the more interesting things, is the segment with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (original score). They reveal that after giving Fincher the music, they discussed it with Fincher and did a very subtle, but interesting thing. "Hand Covers Bruise", the opening piano track, was recorded three different times for each time it was used in the movie. They moved the microphone away from the piano each time, so that its presence would be diminished each time.
The farther removed Mark as a character moves from who he is at the moment at the bar in the opening scene, the more the piano, which is the defining musical element for his character, fades from the mix. Just as his initial character has faded and he's left with nothing but his empire.
Good analysis, but if you had given that much attentiveness to Inception and The King's Speech then you would have liked them just as much if not more.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the most deftly edited portion of the movie which was the regatta scene. Perfectly synced to the music, the scene conveyed the frustration of the Winklevii and Divya in a breathtaking, efficient manner. The scene moves quickly and there's not a wasted frame.
"...-- while rarely placing Mark in the same focal plane as other characters, to emphasize his alienation even (or especially) when others are around him...."
You mention the same point in your previous essays as well, Jim, where you bring into focus the division of planes (focus-wise) of the film, and its significant thematic relevance. As in, everyone is disconnected. Or as in here, Mark is disconnected. Everyone is operating outside of a bubble.
I might not be sure that would be entirely true. It might be an interesting justification, but the compositions and the positioning of the characters betrays a simple filmmaking rule - guide our vision. The focus shifts in any given scene are so spectacularly subtle (almost like our eye) and so efficient in guiding our eyes (sort of like David Bordwell's study on There Will Be Blood), that it would be a fantastic subject for analysis. The reason I say that the alienation argument might not hold true is because virtually any person in any given scene is in focus while the others are out of focus. Even the Winklevoss' are in different planes of focus when they first meet Mark. As far as I remember, during the Angel investment scene, the executive who first greets Mark and Sean, is in the same field of focus as Mark himself, while the other guy speaks (Sean is in a different plane of focus here though).
Yes, Mark is always in a different zone, but I am not sure the focus thing achieves that. I guess it has more to do with Jesse Eisenberg's posturing, and the overall choreography of the scene.
Magnificent article, Jim. One of the best at Scanners.
What do you make of BASTERDS' opening conversation (concealment of information), where the tension is spatial and the vital thing was to keep the eyeline intact, in comparison to the opening of THE SOCIAL NETWORK (excess information), where it is almost the exact opposite? Do you think the script dictates most of the directorial choices, especially with respect to over the table conversations?
I watched the movie tonight again and I kept thinking of you Jim. I respect you and agree with a lot of what you say in this post about the movie, but at the same time I cannot understand your respect for the whole movie as to mention it as the best movie of the year.
Fincher is a great director and deserves awards and whatnot for this movie, but the movie as a whole, the story, the characters, the dialogue are not as worthy. I can watch few scenes of this movie regarding them as authentic, to mention a few would be the confrontations between Saverin and Parker and Zuckerberg's participation in them, but the rest just reeks as annoyingly false to me. The progression of events seems silly, Zuckerberg realizing he has a big idea while explaining to someone else people don't carry signs saying they are single, thn leaving everything dramatically, typing, and suddenly being ready to launch. The explanation of things to the viewer is ridiculous (a brother explaining to his brother that they are identical twins so that we might know early on they actually are identical twins as if we could't see they are actually too identical, people explaining things to people with long prologues in form of stories, who does that?, a twin using all his lawyeresque ability to determine with tv-like suspense that the code of the school says students shouldn't copy from other student.
Don't you feel at times while watching this movie that you are listening to the characters of Vampire Diaries or the OC?
As of story, don't you think the addition of the whole Erica thing is a little too contrived? Whatever they had as a relationship before the fight is never convincing as real or at least important, and the constant drilling that she's the cause of everything is almost as tiring and seems as forced as bringing up the phoenix club for a motivation. Adding those elements lightly as small contributions to the whole could have been an ok, if too formulaic addition to the movie, but making them cornerstones of the whole thing? Now, I understand that a book that wants to make money off of facebook will resort to adding a girl and an underdeveloped sense of inferiority or jealousy as conventional tools you use as part of your money making project, but should a top film use them too? And if so, as unconvincingly?
What is worse than feeling cheated by what seemed phony scene after phony scene is that you see the real Zuckerberg in a 2 minute interview on YouTube and you see how much more interesting he is than the movie's version. A smiley, somewhat shy, somewhat inept, geeky and excited kid that sounds like a comic book fan more than a villainous movie mastermind. Then finding out that he was captain of sports teams and also that he was invested in poetry and literature, make you really really want to have been able to have an exploration of that more complete Mark than the cliche we got in the movie.
There are many things to praise about the movie, the shots, Fincher's role in it, and that of the editors, but what I see as flaws in story, dialoge and construction of characters are for me more painful to watch than whatever I can enjoy of the movie's assets. Am I the only one? You don't see any of these things? You find the scenes in the movie like they could happen that way? That people expose so much in such few, carefully developed sentences? Do the scenes and verbal interactions really seem authentic to you?
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