Friday, December 31, 2010

a note on The Social Network:

To my mind, the key moment of the film, where everything clicks into place, doesn’t come until the final moments of the movie. Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerman sits in front of his laptop, debating whether or not to send an ex a friend request. It’s a simple irony, and one the film gets a lot of mileage out of – the creator of the social networking juggernaut is himself an anti-social prick. He ultimately sends the request (in what Dave Kehr has dubbed the film’s ‘Rosebud moment’), and then begins repeatedly refreshing the page. It’s in that succession of clicks that the film’s power grows, as it suggests the nadir of on-line culture. Isolated, we wait for the page to update, continuously, forever, and so on and so on… It’s an obsessive moment worthy of Zodiac, a compulsive stretching into nothingness.

2 comments:

Phil said...

I couldn't agree more. The first time I watched the movie I kept thinking, this is good, but not great. It wasn't the movie the trailer promised. Those final moments are devastating, in part, for me anyway, because I can absolutely relate.

Daniel said...

I think anyone can relate to that final moment, emotionally if not literally (it comes dangerously close to cyber-stalking). If one is feeling ungenerous, you could call the film cold or clinical, and Fincher's craft is almost too precise. But things finally get a little messy, and more human, in those great last few shots.