So, my friend Fred says that Clint Eastwood's films are like broccoli; good for you, but the consumption of them is not a real hoot. I agree with him regarding Invictus and Gran Torino, and I see his point with Million Dollar Baby, though I felt that film was superior to the previous two. I was prepared to scowl through my fangs at Hereafter, given it's esoteric subject matter. The film tells the story of three main characters. The first, George Lonergan (Matt Damon) is a reluctant psychic who has forsaken a career mining his "gift". The second is Marie LeLay (Cecile De France), a French television journalist dealing with the aftermath of surviving a horrific tsunami. The last and most heart-wrenching, is a young English boy (Frankie and George McLaren) who tragically loses his twin brother in an accident.
George Lonergan leads a lonely existence working in a factory and rebuking his brother's attempts to get him back into doing readings for people who want contact with dead relatives. He feels that his gift is a curse that poisons every chance he has at living a normal life. Normal life is also in jeopardy for Marie, who, after viewing a glimpse of death, cannot get back into the now pedestrian grind of the successful single gal. For twins Marcus and Jason, existence is mere survival as the sons of a drug-addicted single mother who cannot take care of herself, let alone her boys. Marcus and Jason have developed that kind of sad, sweet symbiosis that siblings so often fall into when their parents are woefully neglectful. But Marcus is thrown a cruel curve when Jason (the more dominant and take-charge twin) is killed in a car wreck and social services take Marcus from his mother to live with foster parents. Desperate for answers, Marcus turns to the internet to find someone who can help him communicate with his dead brother.
All three characters have a profound relationship with death that they must reconcile before becoming whole again. Real-life twins Frankie and George McLaren are soul-stirring without pulling the sickly sentimental strings so many directors push child actors to exploit. Cecile De France expresses whole worlds of pain in her deep-set eyes and gives a perfect sense of a woman who almost drowned but feels like she's still drowning months after she's dried off. Screenwriter Peter Morgan, so artful in breathing dramatic life into real-life stories (The Queen, The Special Relationship), gives us a straightforward script to no doubt counteract the dreamy quality of the material. It's not Morgan's best effort, as some of the dialogue isn't worthy of an after-school special, but the movie is engaging nonetheless. Overall, Eastwood presents a compelling story, especially given the skepticism most people have towards the subject of the afterlife.
The biggest problem in Hereafter is Matt Damon. I never thought I'd say this; Damon conspires to ruin this film. As George Lonergan, he mopes pathetically without finding a single thing within the character to make us root for him. He is withdrawn, sullen, sad and sorry and I just couldn't give a shit anymore. Damon lets a tantalizing scene with an interested girl named Melanie (an overeager Bryce Dallas Howard) fall as flat as an ab-less reality star. After his intentionally bland performances in The Good Shepherd and the Bourne franchise I am starting to think the Damon is too much a puppet of directors he reveres. Damon talked at length about Robert De Niro urging him to be devoid of emotion as Edward Wilson during filming of The Good Shepherd. While it was perhaps appropriate for the type of character Damon played, it is not all that interesting to watch for two hours. Off duty, Matt Damon is highly intelligent, funny, spirited and even a little bit wicked. We are seeing none of that on screen of late. Will Hunting is one of the more complex and well-written characters brought to life since the 1970's. Damon embodied Will so wholly and completely we felt like we could help to fix him. Maybe Damon should get back to writing. He is smart enough to deliver fully-cooked stories with meaty roles he can do justice to.
My Comment is about taking control. The life of an actor is a constant waiting game where everybody seems to hold the reins but the actor herself. Some become successful by waiting for fame to hit, but most don't get anywhere unless they get off their asses and make it happen for themselves. Sadly, even those who do shun passivity usually don't make it, but such is the business. Beyond show business, times are particularly tough for the children of Baby Boomers who seem to have gotten none of the killer instinct their parents had. The collective malaise is so prevalent that one is forced to admit that maybe Morgan Freeman was right in Se7en when his character declared that all American's want is to "eat cheeseburgers, play the Lotto and watch t.v.". Even as I write this, I am more consumed with how exhausted I am than anything else. What is wrong with us? Pursuing the path of least resistance isn't going to get us out of this mess, yet we sit, inert and unable to motivate. While expecting the country's youth to get cracking might be a little lofty, I think I can demand as much from Matt Damon, who once had enough fire to set his own industry ablaze in the most inspiring way imaginable.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
The Social Network
The Social Network has a very definable and clear thesis; while the aim of sites like Facebook is to bring people closer together, they have actually achieved the opposite by isolating and preventing us from making real human connections. This is no more apparent than in the character of Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg). I say "character" because it must be pointed out that both the film The Social Network (screenplay by Aaron Sorkin of West Wing fame) and the book The Accidental Billionaires (by Ben Mezrich of 21 fame) represent ideas of who the Facebook players really are. Director David Fincher (of Se7en fame), and producers Scott Rudin (of everything classy fame) and Mike DeLuca (of getting a hummer at a William Morris party in full view of all the guests fame) have served up a deliciously snarky sauce and served it over a salacious story. The details of the Facebook beginnings are as follows; Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg gets dumped by his girlfriend after she declares him obsessed with getting into Harvard's hyper-elite "final clubs". In a lager-filled rage, he goes back to his dorm and blogs about wanting to start the next huge internet idea. Zuckerberg then hacks into Harvard dorm photo catalogs (called Face Books), and beams out thousands of pictures of women placed next to one another. The recipient of said photos is meant to rate the attractiveness of the women in comparison to one another. Zuckerberg gets 22,000 hits within the span of two hours, crashing the Harvard server. Zuck knows he's onto something big.
The film is told through the lens of two lawsuits leveled against Zuckerberg after Facebook began to achieve real success. The first is by Eduardo Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield), Zuckerberg's best friend at Harvard and co-founder of Facebook. The second is by twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (played by Armie Hammer, great-grandson of billionaire industrialist Armand Hammer), who not only look like they were carved from chunks of shimmering plutonium, but their pedigrees do too. The twins (while simultaneously rowing crew and presumably having no problem getting ass) begin work on a social networking site exclusive to Harvard students. The Winklevosses contract Zuckerberg to be the site's programmer, then allege that he went on to steal the idea and turn it into what eventually became the monolithic Facebook.
Shortly after Zuckerberg and Saverin launch Facebook, its popularity catches viral fire and the two expand to other Ivy campuses. When it reaches Stanford, Facebook is discovered by the opportunistic Sean Parker (co-founder of Napster). Parker (played well by Justin Timberlake) meets with Zuckerberg and Saverin and nearly charms the nerd off of Zuckerberg, while Saverin develops an immediate repulsion towards the pseudo elder-statesman. Saverin's lawsuit claims that under the Svengali-like influence of Parker, Zuckerberg forced his co-founder out of the business by diluting his Facebook shares beyond recognition. While most of the details of the story can be corroborated by Mezrich's myriad sources and public court documents, the true nature of The Social Network's real-life cast of characters remain a mystery. Zuckerberg, Saverin and Parker are all famously private, and non-disclosure agreements assure no public shit-talking will take place anytime soon.
As usual, Aaron Sorkin delivers rapier-style dialogue with surgical precision, and nearly every actor delivers a spot-on performance, with Eisenberg being a standout. As Mark Zuckerberg, he portrays a genius with a social awkwardness bordering on Asperger's Syndrome. Angry and misogynistic, Sorkin's version of these baby titans are hell-bent on getting into the clubs (and women) who would never before deign to have them as members. On the surface, Sorkin delivers the aforementioned thesis; the crap about internet connectivity leading to isolation. But I would posit that the real thesis of the film lies within Sorkin himself. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was Sorkin's last foray into television. At the onset, the ratings looked promising, with everyone in the business predicting the demise of the similarly-themed 30 Rock. Soon, however, online bloggers (just beginning to gain momentum) helped to create a negative buzz that Sorkin seemed to blame for the cancellation of his show. He railed against the online critics, and soon, at the internet itself. To quote Sorkin, "One of the things I find troubling about the Internet, as great a resource tool as it is, and as nice as it is that we can all communicate with each other, and that everybody has a voice - the thing is, everybody's voice oughtn't be equal".
While Sorkin theorizes that Zuckerberg invented Facebook to get back at those who he perceived did him wrong, I theorize that Sorkin wrote The Social Network for a similiar reason. He wants to somehow trivialize and thus level a blow (however inconsequential) to the technological vehicle that made Zuckerberg, et, al. the billionaires they are today. My Comment is about Sorkin's hypocrisy. It is a hypocrisy that can be easily found in the film's first scene. While arguing with his girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara, weird and aloof and watchable), Zuckerberg reveals himself to be one of those brilliant minds so incapable of intimacy, that they must hide behind their considerable intellects and lob zingers at whoever stands in their way. Zuckerberg rails against his girl mercilessly, denigrating her sexuality, her intelligence and her background. Sorkin paints a picture of Zuckerberg as an intellectual elitist whose snobbery come across as pathetic and sad. But what of Sorkin using his considerable intellect to ream out internet bloggers who according to him, don't rank as high as New York Times television critics. I'm not negating his position, and Sorkin has every right to let his writing fight some battles for him. I'm just not sure the Mark Zuckerberg necessarily deserves every arrow that Sorkin slings his way. I also have a hard time believing that someone as psychologically savvy as Sorkin could miss this inherent irony. But, The Social Network is still an engaging and entertaining film, which is ultimately Sorkin's goal, right?
The film is told through the lens of two lawsuits leveled against Zuckerberg after Facebook began to achieve real success. The first is by Eduardo Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield), Zuckerberg's best friend at Harvard and co-founder of Facebook. The second is by twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (played by Armie Hammer, great-grandson of billionaire industrialist Armand Hammer), who not only look like they were carved from chunks of shimmering plutonium, but their pedigrees do too. The twins (while simultaneously rowing crew and presumably having no problem getting ass) begin work on a social networking site exclusive to Harvard students. The Winklevosses contract Zuckerberg to be the site's programmer, then allege that he went on to steal the idea and turn it into what eventually became the monolithic Facebook.
Shortly after Zuckerberg and Saverin launch Facebook, its popularity catches viral fire and the two expand to other Ivy campuses. When it reaches Stanford, Facebook is discovered by the opportunistic Sean Parker (co-founder of Napster). Parker (played well by Justin Timberlake) meets with Zuckerberg and Saverin and nearly charms the nerd off of Zuckerberg, while Saverin develops an immediate repulsion towards the pseudo elder-statesman. Saverin's lawsuit claims that under the Svengali-like influence of Parker, Zuckerberg forced his co-founder out of the business by diluting his Facebook shares beyond recognition. While most of the details of the story can be corroborated by Mezrich's myriad sources and public court documents, the true nature of The Social Network's real-life cast of characters remain a mystery. Zuckerberg, Saverin and Parker are all famously private, and non-disclosure agreements assure no public shit-talking will take place anytime soon.
As usual, Aaron Sorkin delivers rapier-style dialogue with surgical precision, and nearly every actor delivers a spot-on performance, with Eisenberg being a standout. As Mark Zuckerberg, he portrays a genius with a social awkwardness bordering on Asperger's Syndrome. Angry and misogynistic, Sorkin's version of these baby titans are hell-bent on getting into the clubs (and women) who would never before deign to have them as members. On the surface, Sorkin delivers the aforementioned thesis; the crap about internet connectivity leading to isolation. But I would posit that the real thesis of the film lies within Sorkin himself. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was Sorkin's last foray into television. At the onset, the ratings looked promising, with everyone in the business predicting the demise of the similarly-themed 30 Rock. Soon, however, online bloggers (just beginning to gain momentum) helped to create a negative buzz that Sorkin seemed to blame for the cancellation of his show. He railed against the online critics, and soon, at the internet itself. To quote Sorkin, "One of the things I find troubling about the Internet, as great a resource tool as it is, and as nice as it is that we can all communicate with each other, and that everybody has a voice - the thing is, everybody's voice oughtn't be equal".
While Sorkin theorizes that Zuckerberg invented Facebook to get back at those who he perceived did him wrong, I theorize that Sorkin wrote The Social Network for a similiar reason. He wants to somehow trivialize and thus level a blow (however inconsequential) to the technological vehicle that made Zuckerberg, et, al. the billionaires they are today. My Comment is about Sorkin's hypocrisy. It is a hypocrisy that can be easily found in the film's first scene. While arguing with his girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara, weird and aloof and watchable), Zuckerberg reveals himself to be one of those brilliant minds so incapable of intimacy, that they must hide behind their considerable intellects and lob zingers at whoever stands in their way. Zuckerberg rails against his girl mercilessly, denigrating her sexuality, her intelligence and her background. Sorkin paints a picture of Zuckerberg as an intellectual elitist whose snobbery come across as pathetic and sad. But what of Sorkin using his considerable intellect to ream out internet bloggers who according to him, don't rank as high as New York Times television critics. I'm not negating his position, and Sorkin has every right to let his writing fight some battles for him. I'm just not sure the Mark Zuckerberg necessarily deserves every arrow that Sorkin slings his way. I also have a hard time believing that someone as psychologically savvy as Sorkin could miss this inherent irony. But, The Social Network is still an engaging and entertaining film, which is ultimately Sorkin's goal, right?
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