By Dan Cohen, Santa Monica Reporter
Sparks fly in the David Fincher/ Aaron Sorkin adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s book, “The Accidental Billionaires.” And that’s a good thing, because so much marketing energy has been lavished on “The Social Network,” you’d think it was the last word on world peace, as opposed to a story about techno nerds looking to better facilitate hookups.
But with 500 million people signed on, and the parent companies’ massive value, “Facebook” is a phenomenon that demands our attention. The movie though, owes most of its heat to its Harvard setting and the associated prestige, which it constantly waves in our faces. But that’s also good; while few of us can attend the classes, we get to wallow in a lot of its internal nastiness and social backbiting. Even better, the movie fulfills all the promise of its tantalizing trailer, and more.
Aaron Sorkin’s ultra smart, cyclonic script doesn’t seem to care how many stories it flings at us in the first half hour. Those who stay with it, and that will be most of the intended audience, will quickly realize there are at least three plot strands unfolding at once, with multiple points of view. Eventually they get sorted out, but until that time, the movie challenges us with its fluid but unannounced movements through time and space.
Director Fincher has found the perfect pitch for both his actors and their setting. The movie is fast, clinical, and slightly detached. You never become invested in the characters; they’re uniformly impatient, self centered and chauvinistic, from their entrances to exits. Such is the lot of the Harvard male, the script seems to say.
Jesse Eisenberg, darkly self involved throughout, is perfectly cast in the lead. I have no idea what the real Mark Zuckerberg is like, but Eisenberg, who’s played thwarted young intellectuals before, rebuffs every challenge the story throws at him. Ferociously intelligent, with the kind of obsessive focus that takes no account of self doubt or reflection, he keeps the movies’ universe in his control, even in silence.
Andrew Garfield, as the business side of the company, is solid too, but he only has a couple notes to play. The half dozen female supporting roles are sharply observed, but provide little more than diversion; this is a boys’ movie.
At the end of the day, (awards time, that is,) I suspect Justine Timberlake’s lightning rod portrayal of the brains behind Napster, will be recognized over Eisenberg and the rest of the cast. Timberlake, who blends a disarming, adolescent voice with a glaringly shallow veneer that barely conceals his feral drives, wrestles the movie out of complacence at exactly the moment its forward momentum starts to flag.
This is a movie that’s more about laying out history than interpreting it. There are frequent satiric asides, pointed jokes that jolt the audience out of the incestuous focus of the characters, but they’re more like punctuation than commentary. That is, until the finale, which comes with a brilliant exclamation point as the whirlwind concludes.
In a moment of uncharacteristic calm, a seemingly inconsequential character, (a proxy for the audience,) comes forward with a pronouncement of devastating clarity. I have no idea whether the book uses the same device, but Fincher and Sorkin have got to be given credit for ultimately having their way with these characters, without appearing superior or manipulative.
Zuckerberg, the boy genius now worth over a billion, has been quoted as saying he wanted to change the world. But in what way he doesn’t make clear. There’s nothing wrong with that; the creative impulse is hardly beholden to unintended consequences. Omniscience is the province of the Greek chorus, and there’s none here. But this and other retellings of recent social history reminded me of something the late Irving Kristol said at a commencement address many years ago. “It’s easy to change the world,” he declared, “what’s hard is to change it the way you want to.” Is there a lesson in that for the boyish billionaires who engineered Facebook, and others like them?
“The Social Network” arrives at a crossroads in the history of movie making. It’s the first major feature to use a high end digital camera with a special chip that dramatically improves the quality of the image. Without going into great detail, this chip allows the camera to capture a greater range of blacks with increased ease and flexibility.
There are a couple of advantages here. First, night scenes come across with far greater detail. Second, and perhaps more important, this new chip delivers more definition and depth than chips in prior image “capture systems,” ( I refrain from calling them “video cameras,” a holdover from the old days; these are whole new animals.) The result is images that compete with the best 35 millimeter. And yet they’re different.
To say the blacks are more pronounced seems on its face, of relatively little import to a medium we automatically associate with color. We generally think of black as a singular visual element. But the many grades of black contribute more than any other value, enhancing all the rest. This new chip, called the “mysterium” by its maker, when allied with high end lenses, renders digital images with compelling clarity and complexity.
You can see that not only in the expressive texture of “The Social Network’s” many evening exteriors, but also in the daylight scenes, like the boat race on the Charles River. In the past too many digital features have been confined to a color palette that was clipped down to a narrower range. And images marred by “video” noise. Sometimes directors have used this to their advantage, like Michael Mann in “Public Enemy.” But too often the films looked cold and distant, too much like TV news or reality shows.
Film, since it delivers images through a grain, or emulsion, has always been associated with a softer, more impressionistic texture. The first digital images considered acceptable for narrative purposes were still harder and sharper than film; in a way comparable to the high pitched sound of the early CDs.
With the advent of high end digital cameras the look has become more cinematic, even as it maintained a certain identity of its own; sharp focus, precise colors etc. In the wake of newly improved “image capture,” the old look of film, once the norm, has begun to draw attention to itself, in the same way analog records did once CDs gained a foothold. At a recent screening of “Never Let Me Go,” a film of relentlessly soft images, I became first aware, then impatient with the almost obsessively grainy cinematography. It wasn’t that the look was bad—I was just so bored by the movie I started to focus on the technique. Not a good sign. Nevertheless, the 35mm look now stands out.
And there’s more. Although I’m not sure about the multi-plexes in Lancaster, many theaters in the country have converted to digital projection. Since digital projectors bypass actual reels of film for huge files, it’s absent a host of problems that beset traditional exhibition. Image degradation due to worn prints is non existent. Also, there’s none of that annoying flutter, particularly evident with older projectors, because there’s no longer a film gate. And the amount of light projected is greatly increased.
To be sure there are technical issues with the new equipment. When it goes down, really goes down. The level of illumination can be distracting if not properly modulated. But audiences are rapidly acclimating to the advantages of both digital projection and movies that are shot with the new cameras.
Traditional film, with its particular look, and its warmth, has now become one of several choices for story telling. The new media will no doubt learn to mimic the qualities of its forerunners; the digital medium is nothing if not malleable. At this moment the latest breakthroughs, (like the mysterium chip,) have finally made the digital medium a worthy competitor. As the price of cameras with this new functionality comes down, and they’re falling like spring rain, and people become acclimated to digital imagery, independent filmmakers will be able to compete on a higher level. This can’t be bad.
