Talking Movies

November 20, 2010

6 Tags on The Social Network

1. Fincher

Despite not featuring serial killers or ultra-violence Fincher has made a film that is very much ‘A David Fincher Film’ rather than ‘An Aaron Sorkin Film’, even though Sorkin makes his traditional cameo. Fincher inserts the obligatory show-off CGI enhanced tracking shot, this time across the West Coast night-club, alongside the customary downbeat colour scheme, and creates a constant unnerving tension that wasn’t expected from this particular material.

2. Reznor

The soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is superb. The rumbling processed beats underneath Sean Parker’s first meeting with Mark and Eduardo are very like the Dust Brothers’ music for Fight Club and serve a slightly different purpose. Yes, they power the film along, but are also quite unsettling. You can rock along to Tyler Durden’s counter-cultural mischief, to a point, but Mark’s actions are always suspicious.

3. Loneliness

The ending is somewhere between The Godfather: Part II and an unhappy Fight Club. In a way Sean Parker is the Tyler Durden of this tale but in the end Mark doesn’t get rid of him to choose Erica Albright instead, a la Tyler and Marla. He’s left clicking refresh repeatedly, all powerful, but all alone; like Michael Corleone haunted by ghosts at the end of Part II.

4. Sorkin

Studio 60’s incredibly vicious break-up fight between Matt and Harriet informs the whole movie; not least because it starts with an equally emotionally raw scene, which sets the prevailing tone for proceedings. There is witty repartee and articulate gags but Sorkin cannot practise his usual optimism when writing a character who isn’t a flawed person so much as a failed person. Mark is all head, and no heart.

5. Henley Regatta

The Henley Regatta sequence is very weird. The colour scheme has been so much Fincher speciale up to this point that the explosion into the bright colour of the summery outdoors is quite a shock. Then Reznor and Ross do a truly strange version of Grieg while Fincher shoots out of focus, edits so rapidly as to be Dadaist, and generally makes a traditional event very odd.

6. The Girl with a Golden Future

Rooney Mara is luminous. She only has three scenes but she’s gifted such wonderfully articulate and devastating dialogue by Sorkin that she conveys achingly the human damage that can be wreaked by the internet’s destructive powers when used against people by their supposed friends. For my money I think she’s far better casting for the part of Lisbeth Salander than her Swedish counterpart…


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