Friday, October 22, 2010

My Take -The Social Network

I log in to my Facebook account everyday with absolutely no strings attached - I know my login id and password, I key them in, click the login button and bingo, I'm connected to my friends! I realize that I've allowed FB to creep into my life unwittingly and now, it just won't go. But you know what, maybe its not a bad thing at all! After all, its the greatest technological innovation of this century and it's cool to be a part of it. The movie is such a fantastic take on its founder in terms of craft. Call it perspective, but I know people are pissed because it doesn't voice the opinions of all of the people directly and indirectly involved in it. Its probably Fincher's dramatization. All the same, its bloody brilliant! The switching back and forth between law suits and undergrad dorms is so perfectly timed and filmed. They're very fast-paced with a high momentum and energy level, so much so that I felt like I was on a breathless trail catching up on the story. There is not one wasted moment in the entire movie, not one frame devoted to any purpose other than enacting through a wonderful script the story of Facebook. But that's our hero, our focus of interest - THE social network! It is as if the characters, including Mark Zuckerberg do what they were doing to make possible its existence, to let it be. That's primarily the reason I completely enjoyed the movie. It felt like the SNS was an important piece of a jigsaw puzzle, and once Fincher figured out how to portray its inception, everything else fell into place. And that's probably why there may have been a considerable amount of deviation from reality, because when you get right down to it, is the story of a genius programmer who "tried hard to be an asshole" easy to tell? Fincher plays his cards with style and class. There's plenty of humor and wit in the right places, so the movie doesn't boil down to just a boring biography. It's almost like the script has a heart beating inside it, pumping oxygen to every syllable on it. When you have actors who can do full justice to the purpose of the script, you know you've got the audience hooked. Isn't that the beauty of a film? It has a language of its own, and the style of film makers and actors define its constructs. I like to think that I understand cinema as an art, not just a two-hour ride into fantasy-land with the time span between the start and end credits. On the contrary, its made by real people with real feelings. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross felt the movie throbbing with life, and scored music that perfectly matched its pace. They speak the same language as the movie. And so does everybody else involved in The Social Network. Its with the same language in mind that I write this, and I know it will surface in all of my brain cells each time I log in to Facebook.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmmm... Nice... FB is more than a technology and site... I joined it for name sake but now its my main source of keeping in touch with friends...

Btw,.. Been a long time since the last post..?

Soundarya said...

I agree. And yes, its been a long time. This is a perfect getaway for me. Maybe I'll blog a little more often from now.