David Fincher- A Retrospective- From Best to Worst
Reviews on every single major work by David Fincher including Seven, Fight Club, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Benjamin Button Zodiac, The Game, Panic Room, The Social Network, Alien³, and the first two episodes of House of Cards.
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- DirectorDavid FincherStarsMorgan FreemanBrad PittKevin SpaceyTwo detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his motives.If Fincher didn’t invent the convention of the brilliant serial killer always being just one step ahead of the police, he unquestionably perfected it here. This is the twisted psychopath unleashing his vengeance upon the deserving, avaricious world at its absolute best. And this remains Fincher’s best film.
Two cops in New York are hunting a serial killer. The presence of the killer is momentous even before the detectives track him down, once caught, the killer is channeled through Kevin Spacey with a disturbingly authentic evil calm.
Written by Andrew Kevin Walker, this amazing original script that was almost never made. Walker wrote it as an original screenplay around 1991. Apparently he was quite depressed at the time. New Line Cinema bought it, but it took years before it went into production Walker went to work on other projects thinking the script would never be made, but it was. It was released Sept 22, 1995.
By using the seven deadly sins as the basis for justifying the killer’s prerogative, the film’s plot is definitely one of the best around, added to this amped up, excellent performances by Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, the production comes off flawlessly, but Seven is so haunting and goes down as one of the best Thrillers of all time because of Fincher’s vision of a hellish New York. This world is poison and Fincher makes it seep.
The grit and grime of the crimes scenes combined with filth of the city streets, alleyways, rooftops, constantly being pounded with rain, darkness engulf even the few happy moments of the film. So much of this film’s beauty is in the compilation. The sets and lighting are so complex that making Seven must have been the result of a finely tuned crew, each member bulked up on their own creative genius. It is how everything, every element aligns perfectly that makes Se7en such a phenomenal filmmaking achievement. - DirectorDavid FincherStarsBrad PittEdward NortonMeat LoafAn insomniac office worker and a devil-may-care soap maker form an underground fight club that evolves into much more.Nearly everyone knows the rules, number one of which I’m about to break.
What do you do if you’re sick of your boring, pathetic life? In the most cathartic, DIY approach possible, Fight Club answers this question: you change it. The absolute prototype of an existential thriller, it wouldn’t be taking too much of a leap to suggest that Fight Club is one of the best films ever made.
Jim Uhls’ excellently adapted screenplay of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel (this is the only major work by Uhls that I can find), this thriller has been exciting male audiences the world over since its release in 1999. Even Palahniuk himself said the film was amazing. In fact, he admitted that film was so good, the book in comparison made him feel ashamed.
A nameless, pitiful, seemingly friend and family-less Office worker (Edward Norton) suffers from insomnia. True to Palahniuk’s style, the solution to the insomnia comes in a bizarre way. He finds relief by attending support groups for diseases, diseases he doesn’t have; these people really listen to him, and afterwards, he sleeps. At these meetings he meets Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Character), a nemesis and lover, and it is through her that Mr. Office worker discovers his true self, but not until after he’s transformed more than just his own life.
Mr. Pitiful Office worker meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). Durden helps Mr. Pitiful Office worker admit to his misery once and for all. Channeling their suppressed male aggression in its rawest form, they start fighting each other. Soon Mr. Pitiful Office worker realizes that he and Durden are not alone.
Men, downtrodden, tired of their insignificance as worthless individuals all aim to do something greater. They jump at the chance to vent their primal steam, and the solo fights turn into group fights.
Durden’s vision eventually transcends aggression in its physical form and becomes something much greater, a community where the individual ceases to exist. As part of this whole, every unnamed member is an equal and significant contributor, and it is through the whole that the individual finds meaning. As part of the whole they are changing the future together.
This movie is a directing marvel. With time shifts, psychological manipulations, and very meticulous scene planning, we are kept on the edge of our seats for the entire film. Accompanied by the pounding soundtrack composed by the Dust Brothers, Fincher achieves the rarity of making a movie better than a book. Fincher turns the concrete basement of Lou’s Tavern into perhaps the most famous arena in all of modern film. The house on Paper Street, a lone abandoned mansion, becomes a factory of redefinition, of reinvention. In the final scene an amazing mesh between the visuals and the music, The Pixies’ “Where is my Mind,” Fincher creates one of the most stunning combinations of sight and sound in all of film. And it's a pretty damn good ending to the plot too.
The most memorable scene is when Durden is behind the wheel of a car full of passengers. He buckles up, pins the gas, and lets go of the wheel. The car veers off the road and crashes, flipping multiple times. We are force fed the hard truth here. The Fight Club mantra: to change to our lives we need to rid ourselves of our past failures, forget the job, the kids, the car, the living room, the flat screen HDTV, and just let go.
You are not your f'cking khakis. - DirectorDavid FincherStarsDaniel CraigRooney MaraChristopher PlummerJournalist Mikael Blomkvist is aided in his search for a woman who has been missing for 40 years by computer hacker Lisbeth Salander.Thanks to David Fincher, the world now has Rooney Mara to admire (and stare at). She plays the Goth misfit Lisbeth in this film, her first lead role, and she’s actually pretty good. She does revenge particularly well. A fierce character, while not dominating every scene, Rooney dominates the film. She is the one we think a hour later.
I will not try and compare her performance with Noomi Repace's, whom I also love to watch. Both do Lisbeth their
own way.
When Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) gets into some political hot water and needs to get out of Stockholm, he takes a job as an investigator in the Swedish countryside trying to solve the mystery of a disappeared girl, but there are people that do not want him to to find the answers. Eventually he teams up with Lisbeth and they work on the case together.
In the first part of the film, the intersecting story lines between the two main characters are done with skill. Many scenes are not action or dialogue based, yet all they all add to the story. The decision to film this version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in Sweden, as opposed to swapping it out for some American city, was a well made one.
Since so much of the story is told in images, kudos goes to the editors Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall. Both are long time collaborators of Fincher, and they’ve both won multiple Oscars, including one for this film. I get the suspicion that they worked extra overtime on this movie; there are just tons and tons of scenes, a complete 180 from the style of Panic Room.
The chemistry between Rooney and Craig really builds throughout the film as the two work great together. The irregularity of the pairing makes it much more interesting and intriguing to follow than most typical, on-screen romances.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is not the most depressing of all Fincher productions, but it’s still pretty low down there, and I mean this in the best way possible. It’s either always raining or cold outside while sometimes this envorinment is contrasted against interior scenes that are pristine, white, clean. Tension. Clean rooms don't seem to apear often in Fincher films, and as expected there are many others that are dark and dirty.
The film ends in a reasonably satisfying way leaving us hanging, waiting for the sequel.
Errata: I could have gone without the final Stockholm scene when Lisbeth is riding her motorbike through the streets as it snows. A similar situation occurred in The Wolverine (2013) where Logan rode a motorbike through the mountains in Japanese winter. These situations would never occur. Motorbikes and snow are never a very convincing combination (for me anyway). - DirectorDavid FincherStarsBrad PittCate BlanchettTilda SwintonBenjamin Button, born in 1918 with the physical state of an elderly man, ages in reverse. He experiences love and break-ups, ecstasy and sorrow, and timelessness by the time he dies in 2003 as a baby.As an elderly woman lies on her deathbed she recounts the peculiar story of Benjamin Button, a man whose life is inexplicably tied to a mysterious backwards-running clock. After Benjamin’s mother dies in childbirth, the father abandons baby Benjamin because of his stark physical defects. Luckily Queenie, a black woman who manages a senior’s care home, finds newborn Benjamin and raises him herself. For the rest of his life Benjamin calls Queenie mother.
When Benjamin is born, he emerges prematurely aged. Medical tests show that he has the physical characteristics of a person in his eighties. Originally penned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, makes Benjamin Button tells a peculiar life story that forays in the world of the fantastic: the crux of the story is that, just as the clock ticks backwards, Benjamin too ages in reverse. He gets younger and younger over time.
The task of dealing with this massive disconnect between his physically aged exterior, and his inner infantile self, forces Benjamin to attempt to act like an adult (to match his aged exterior), but no matter how hard he tries his true inner child shines through, especially whenever it comes to booze and women, areas where he has zero experience. Benjamin wins the adoration of most every character he meets, and along the way he breaks through the prejudicial barriers that age and race typically erect.
This film is a diversion for Fincher. Many of the defining qualities of David Fincher’s films are not so very present in Benjamin Button. This charmed, almost magical tale shares none of the characteristic of other Fincher scripts. It is not filtered through the darkened lens of hyper awareness; there is none of the desolation and bleak deconstruction of modern culture that fills Zodiac, the most recently released Fincher film before this one.
Benjamin Button seems to be the only film in Fincher's body of work that is not a dark, psychological thriller. Here, Fincher proves that he can work in drama just as well as he can work in action and suspense, however he does have expert help.
The director of photography Claudio Miranda, who had worked on a number of Fincher’s earlier pictures, sets the tones and temperature of the images so they project like a thriller, dark with shadows, slight, almost sepia toned. A highly refined picture quality.
Once again, this film features Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter, the brilliant editing team that would go on to win multiple Oscars for best editing in The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. They brilliantly let visuals alone tell as much of the story as possible. As with Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Benjamin Button has tons of shots and locations. The exact opposite of Panic Room.
Eric Roth & David Fincher
The technique of recounting the story through recollection as a series of flashbacks, as well as Benjamin’s unexpected success despite his handicap, make Benjamin Button bear an off-putting resemblance to the structure of Forest Gump (1994). This is no coincidence.
The same writer who won an Oscar for his Forest Gump screenplay, Eric Roth, is also the writer of Benjamin Button.
As characters both Forest and Benjamin worked on boats, both took part in World Wars, and both perpetually pursue women from their childhood. What is great thought is that Fincher is able to divert this potential redundancy. While Forest bumbles along, simply falling into phenomenal situations, Benjamin paves his own way. It’s existential drive versus dumb luck. - DirectorDavid FincherStarsMichael DouglasDeborah Kara UngerSean PennAfter a wealthy San Francisco banker is given an opportunity to participate in a mysterious game, his life is turned upside down as he begins to question if it might really be a concealed conspiracy to destroy him.In a dark, dangerous San Francisco lives Nicholas Van Orten (Michael Douglas), a very rich businessman and a total loner. He doesn’t come across as pathetic, but as rather as stern and cold, and blatantly unhappy despite the lap of luxury in which he lives. Sensing Nicholas’ unhappiness, Nicholas’ wild and über ostentatious brother Conrad (Sean Penn) appears and presents Nicholas a birthday gift, a gift that is sure to add some excitement to Nicholas life, and lift him out of the depressive fog that he carries around everywhere.
Along the way we learn some little bits of information about Nicholas’ life, but not much, which is nice because his past doesn’t really seem to matter anyway. Fincher takes the character and forces him to deal strictly with the present time. All past regrets, misdeeds, and sins fall away when you are literally fighting for your life.
Conrad’s gift is a game. A set of real life, role-playing scenarios designed and executed by a company alleged called CRS. We don’t know what CRS is, and neither does Nicholas, so when bizarre happenings start to occur, such as the nightly news anchor breaking character and speaking directly to Nicholas in his living room, Nicholas cannot tell what is really happening. Is this part of the game? Or am I hallucinating?
Soon the puppet masters at CRS crank up the intensity of the events. There are numerous attempts on Nicholas’ life. At one point he wakes up in Mexico after having been buried alive in an underground tomb. The occurrences are so extreme, that as an audience, we are just as confused as Nicholas. It is real? Or is it a game? It is impossible to tell, and this is what makes this film so much fun to watch.
The world that CRS tailors to its clients is very cool and well put together. Even though Nicholas is told distinctly that the CRS game will begin, and it is not until after he is told this that strange and dangerous things start to happen, we are still unsure if it’s game or reality. Fincher is essentially blurring our understanding of the common philosophical conventions of cause and effect.
The Game is a good thriller, and an entertaining watch. The production value of the film is excellent. It projects on screen in dark, shadowy tones, mixed with diverse textures setting one scene to next to a another composed completely different. The film is full of interesting settings from Nicholas’ mansion, to a Mexican border town, to meetings in coffee shops, to cabins in the woods, but despite the actual events taking place being very entertaining to watch, the film never really establishes what truth it is trying to convey. The ending is disappointing. We are not left with any kind of substantial meaning.
The CRS experience is meant to be a massive, over-the-top shock to the nervous system. This shock forces one, Nicholas in this case, to decide whether he wants to fight to stay alive, or let go and die. Maybe we are supposed to take the hint and choose to live now, even though we don’t have CRS to break us out of our depression and lethargy, as individuals, or as a whole society. But this might be pushing the limits of interpretation. Despite the absence of the deeper themes, such as investigating the pointlessness of existence as in Fight Club, or the proving the worthlessness of humanity as in Seven, The Game is still great watch. Once the film ends, it doesn’t linger for days in the front of your mind like the best thrillers, but while your watching it you’ll be on the edge of your seat, never knowing what it going to happen next. - CreatorBeau WillimonStarsKevin SpaceyMichel GillRobin WrightA Congressman works with his equally conniving wife to exact revenge on the people who betrayed him.Congressman Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey) is the smartest guy in Washington, but we meet him just as he suffers a devastating betrayal shifting his career into neutral, but this is only the beginning. We can tell by his acute composure and his stiff body language that even though he is extremely distraught, he is very far from defeated. He will never reveal his distress. That would be a sign of weakness. Underwood will even play his subservient role, for now, but eventually, his time will come, with the help of reporter Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara) Perfectly cast as here, Mara has a unique allure as an actress, and as with all her roles, she is unassumingly engulfing.
The congressman makes it loud and clear that he yearns for power. Using off-stage, to-audience-only recitations, he shares his real thoughts and objectives; it’s like getting inside the head of a sociopath, making an almost trite connection between pathology and politics, but Spacey is so convincing as an individual, he doesn’t speak for the masses, *beep* the masses, that the intended commentary on the sociopathic political mindset actually becomes more ingrained and powerful than trite. It works cleverly it all its glaring obviousness.
We observe characters alone, watch them move, interpret their body language. Especially Underwood’s lovely wife Claire (Robin Wright). A fog of loneliness wafts over the show even as characters embrace, make alliances, and settle debts. Everyone competes neck-in-neck for Washington’s top spots, of which there are few.
When Netflix, supposedly nothing more than your friendly neighbourhood video store, started making its own productions, the stakes were low. But Netflix has officially hit the ball outta the park. Way Out. Both of its debut series House of Cards and Orange is the New Black are blazing successes, and not just commercially, but as statements themselves: artistically, emotionally, and stylistically unique, they are really very good. Orange is the New Black especially has come up with some ultra-creative plots and characters that are a blast to watch.
How did a first time production company, that was observably not-at-all subtle in its blazing out of the gate with such pomp and circumstance over it new shows’ greatness, make such great debut shows? With very deep pockets, they hired the expert help. Not just movies stars like Kevin Spacey, but veteran film directors.
As the debut director for the series House of Card, David Fincher sets the tone of intrigue and shadows that shroud his dark thrillers. Post-HBO renaissance, Fincher achieves what any great director working in upscale TV does: he makes the episodes come across as mini-political thrillers, pieces of cinema unto themselves. The newsroom scenes are vaguely reminiscent of Zodiac. But as he directs the first episodes, it is his footsteps all others must follow.
With so many scenes, directors of this kind of TV work hard. Big shows need a surplus of directors. Breaking Bad had a different director for almost every episode. Most directors work in other capacities on other episodes as writers or producers. Compared to film, how much does the director of the cinematic TV show’s vision actually make it to the screen? The Sopranos had dozens of directors, but none really left a distinct imprint on the show. Do we remember their names? Not really. It was the show itself that had a style.
It seems like with shows like House of Cards, The Sopranos, or Breaking Bad that the momentum of the cast, combined with writers great scripts, makes the job of the director to step in and to channel this momentum, rather than drum it up from scratch as in film. But Fincher’s first two episodes of House of Cards are the force that starts the momentum. It is his footsteps that all others must follow in what continues over the season’s following eleven intriguing episodes. - DirectorDavid FincherStarsJake GyllenhaalRobert Downey Jr.Mark RuffaloBetween 1968 and 1983, a San Francisco cartoonist becomes an amateur detective obsessed with tracking down the Zodiac Killer, an unidentified individual who terrorizes Northern California with a killing spree.Now that the criminal mastermind flick has become a set type, widely overdone, this film tends to get easily shrugged off as yet another film about an ultra-intelligent serial killer who is always one step ahead of the cops, yes just like Seven. Still though, this film is quite different. Zodiac has nowhere near as much internal darkness bursting from its seams.
But Zodiac is dark, just not Seven dark. Even though Zodiac is still a murder-thriller, it’s tone compared to Seven, is a like a lovely ray of sunshine. Being that this storyline is all loosely based on actual events, enacting the film out in the time period during which it occurred, the late 60’s-early 70’s gives the film a freshness, a nostalgia that seems to come with those decades.
The plot: In an age before mail bombs and anthrax scares, a killer toys with his pursuers by leaving complex clues just above their tracker’s radars, just out of reach of their capabilities, the chase then becomes perpetual, the madness wide spread- reporters, cops, victim’s families, all exposed to the madness. Society engulfing.
The lighting, the darkness, the shadows, the string dissonance, and the rain of course: all hugely important to Fincher’s work, perhaps his most important set of tricks, perhaps they could even be called Finchinian, or would it be Ficheresque? They pop up in all this films.
In the real tense bits we get close, claustrophobic shots, bare-bones dialogue, tense body
language, the potential victim’s fear seeping almost literally thought the screen, then BAM! Scene complete. No sentimentality.
None of Fincher’s tactics in creating suspense come across as clichés. These are textbook lessons in how to frame a successful suspense scene. In a thriller the actor is a part of the puzzle. Like a part of complex musical arrangement, all the players need to play their parts perfectly.
In thrillers the character is thrown into an extreme situation, an abyss created by the filmmaker, and Zodiac, unlike Panic Room, is a bottomless abyss. Great performances are made by the actor’s that find the rawest, ravenous ways to claw their ways out, even if the character fails.
During Zodiac, Jake Gyllehaal was still coming up in the ranks. He had not fully moved on to the badass action hero roles he plays today and in his underling position in the film, as a cartoonist constantly getting in the way of the “real” reporters, he becomes an interesting underdog of a main character, even though he’s not supposed to be the main attraction. A pleasure to watch, we know, and he knows, he is in a subservient role and he never breaks out of it .
Thrillers are the king of film as the symphony is king of music. Great symphonies are difficult to execute. So many elements, so many moving parts, everything must align perfectly, so when that moment of suspense is created, in both thriller and symphony, whether scene of movement, we stand in awe.
Zodiac has those moments. - DirectorDavid FincherStarsJodie FosterKristen StewartForest WhitakerA divorced woman and her diabetic daughter take refuge in their newly-purchased house's safe room when three men break-in, searching for a missing fortune.Panic Room (2002) - In slasher flicks like Scream (1996), break-ins are single scenes. Heist flicks like The Bank Job (2008) or The Score (2001) spend most of the films planning out the break-ins, and then only a scene or two actually carrying them out. So the fact that aside from the very beginning, Panic Room is just really one long break-in scene always made the film seem like a silly waste of time. I mean, it gives the whole plot away right in the title. A couple of thieves arrive and tear up the place, the family hides, problems occur. Hurray.
The coincidence of everything just-so-happening to be available at the exact right time: the happenstance of the break-in coinciding with the idea that the house just so happens to contain a panic room, this seems too much to handle.
Yet all the mighty forces align and provide the viewer with an experience that is actually quite satisfying. Although not an overly complicated plot, the script is very well written and includes explanations for exactly why these happenings occur as they do.
For skeptic viewers like me, who usually find unexplainable exceptional coincidences a deal breakers, David Keopp’s logical, explanatory script (Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible) provides answers, and an excellent foundation for David Fincher to build his dark mess. (IMDB says Keopp got 4 million bucks for the script, so….).
Seemingly, this film takes the primal fear of invasion, bad people coming into our homes in the night and doing bad things to us. But rather than exploit the concept a has been beaten to death, Panic Room does not rely on the traditional fear of invasion. It adds dimension, reason, even a kind of logic explaining how this whole event could have turned out right for everyone, if only it could have unfolded just a single day earlier.
It is in considering the film’s simplicity that the profound difficulty of this film’s production is most realized. The decision for the director and crew to call “that’s a wrap” must have been murky one.
Unlike any of Fincher’s other films, Panic Room is shot entirely on only one set, in linear time, and deals with only with a single event. It is minimal in its approach, like a play. It is essentially all based on the interaction of the actors stage together, almost.
Forest Whitacker, Jodie Foster and even Dwight Yoakam all crank out great performances, but Fincher’s dark, perfectly influential shots, using unusual angles, intercoms and video cameras, small vs. open spaces, and of course, darkness and rain are what make this cinema, and not theater. Aligning open frames with great musical peaks, the score by Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings) intensifies the single track plot of Panic Room, pushing it along as a series of arcs, suspensefully running up and down, each arc increasing in intensity, until the film hits the peak, and even though we knew all along what was coming, we are still very satisfied with when it finally does. - DirectorDavid FincherStarsSigourney WeaverCharles S. DuttonCharles DanceReturning from LV-426, Ellen Ripley crash-lands on the maximum-security prison Fiorina 161, where she discovers that she has unwittingly brought along an unwelcome visitor.His firm hand of creative direction is not there as the actors visibly struggle. Sigourney Weaver is okay but doesn’t mesh well with a cast that just doesn’t cradle her character; they have no idea what she has been through in the first two films and how tough she is. For some reason too she is very cryptic about her past, and reveals little information about the alien situation. Why wouldn’t she just tell them the truth?
The relationships she does form with the cast are shaky and forced. Almost every character ends up dead, but it doesn’t matter because we didn’t know them anyway.
As Fincher’s first major feature film, the style of Alien 3 bears the least resemblance to his other films. It is his most inexpertly made film. AKA, his worst film, technically anyway. I still prefer Aliens 3 to The Social Network any day, but after investigating the production of this film I came to realize that Fincher was not totally responsible for the lackluster film that made it to theatres.
When David Fincher was brought into direct Alien 3, it was after another director had already begun production, and was fired. There was not even a finished script. As one contributor wrote in the IMDB Alien 3 FAQs about, Fincher “was forced to effectively write, shoot, and edit the film, all at the same time.[1] There were millions of dollars worth of sets built and many takes and scenes had already been shot. Twentieth Century Fox insisted Fincher incorporate these into his production to save money.
The shadows of the masterminds behind the first two Alien films, Ridley Scott and James Cameron, must have been looming over the production, because as Fincher completed a rough cut of film, Twentieth Century Fox panicked. They began started dictating that certain things were going to have to be re-shot in certain ways, essentially stripping Fincher of all creative control. He would eventually walk away from the film. The version that was released in theatres was his rough draft, completed by a new crew in LA.
In 2003 editor David Crowther took up the task of assembling what was of the original draft, and re-edited it in a way he though was most likely the way the Fincher version would have turned out. This release was called the Assembly Cut (I have yet to see it).
All that drama of the film’s production aside, the story had real potential. Even following Cameron’s greatness on Aliens (1986), enough time has past that Cameron’s production was no longer fresh, and this third installment could have made a significant contribution to the series. The idea of a pod crashing on a giant prison planet bringing with it an alien that threatens to wipe out all life there, and possibly even all mankind is a cool idea, right? What would have become of this rough draft had studio execs not meddled? All we’ll ever have is the Assembly Cut.
The most modern incarnation of the Alien series lives on in the amazing contemporary film Prometheus directed by Ridley Scott, and on November 27th, 2015 the second installment of the Prometheus series is set be released with both Ridely Scott and Jack Pagen, the man who wrote Prometheus 1 involved. This is a film I’m counting down the days for.
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103644/faq?ref_=tt_faq_2#.2.1.14 - DirectorDavid FincherStarsJesse EisenbergAndrew GarfieldJustin TimberlakeAs Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg creates the social networking site that would become known as Facebook, he is sued by the twins who claimed he stole their idea and by the co-founder who was later squeezed out of the business.Maybe not understanding all the programming and math involved in the technical side of the project makes me feel like an idiot? I have no idea what any of equations or algorithms mean, or how to write script.
Maybe I’m a little jealous because I never got to go to college parties as glamorous as the ones in this film?
Or maybe the problem is that the subject matter it just so banal that despite the quality of the production, this film is lost on me?
I have a problem with this film that is so full of maybes. And yet for all its weaknesses, it won three Oscars, albeit one of them was for Baxter and Wall's editing, which is superb. Both editors have worked on numerous Fincher productions.
None of the actors are convincing at portraying the real people they are supposed represent. Maybe that’s the point? They are attempting to play versions of Zuckerberg and Co. that seem more interesting than the real, live versions.
I guess I see the reasoning behind this. As activities, creating companies, programming computers, or writing software, no matter how profound, aren’t exactly as riveting as invading Bin Laden’s compound, or smuggling blood diamonds out of Liberia.
Still, I am no fan of Jesse Eisenberg. His success is baffling to me. He was for a while a Michael Cera impersonation gone wrong, now, whatever he is, he does it well. He sells tons of tickets…but none of them are to me.
The best part about this film is that it has Rooney Mara, briefly. Later she becomes Lisbeth in Dragon Tattoo.
The most interesting thing about this film is simply that it exists and was so successful. Rather, that a production company actually paid David Fincher to try and create a full-on thriller packed with betraying, greedy, snarky little boys either getting their way, or losing millions of dollars. Poor babies.
Even if in the end Zuckerberg did create something monumental, so what. It's just a monument to a monument. What does any of this represent? How does any of this change the world?
It’s not like Facebook has cured any sick people or stopped any wars. It’s arguably even created a recent few (of both).