BRAINSTORM - film: The Social Network
1. of the moment
2. rooney mara attractive, a discovery
3. fantastic script, dialogue
4. complicated, interwoven structure
5. funny
6. Eduardo is moral center
7. Let's not forget these are all a bunch of Harvard snobs
8. Justin Timberlake fantastic
9. Theme: you can't have real relationships online
10. good score - Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross - nominated
11. favorite line, "I'm 6-5, 220, and there's two of me"
12. David Fincher - brilliant, getting more mainstream, or at least less macabre
13. a-hole = cool?
14. Aaron Sorkin = snob?
15. Aaron Sorkin's Golden Globe acceptance speech - elite
MY REVIEW - The Social Network
I loved the movie "The Social Network" for all the reasons it has won the majority of end of season awards: it is witty, complex, insightful, well-acted, and of the moment. Still, I can't help feeling a little conflicted about Aaron Sorkin's Golden Globe acceptance speech in which he made a shout-out for elitism. Does that make him a snob (or me deeply insecure)? Probably both are true, but what sits funny with me is how the movie portrays all of these dazzlingingly intelligent and articulate people who - let's face it - most of us would never get a chance to meet. With the exception of Mark Zuckerberg's ex-girlfriend "Erica" - played by the soon to go supernova Rooney Mara - there's really not a regular person in the main cast. Even the moral center of the story is a spoiled rich kid who, according to the script, once made $300,000 in one summer. And yet I'm pretty sure Sorkin's theme - or at least one of them - is that excellence, or being elite, necessarily requires being an a-hole. The Rashida Jones character (again, one of the few sympathetic figures who in all likelihood is a comfortably-living, San Francisco attorney) caps off the movie with the line, "You're not an a-hole, Mark. You're just trying so hard to be." The Zuckerberg character isn't consciously pursuing a-holeness, but he states more than once that he wants Facebook to be "cool." So does cool=a-hole? Or do you have to be one to succeed? I think the answer, to a certain extent, is yes, but then a-hole is in the eye of the beholder. There's no objective measure, so at the end of the day, it's this: if I want to achieve a certain level of success, there's no avoiding someone thinking I'm an a-hole, and I'm going to have to be comfortable with that. Anyway, great movie, and I'm realizing, an even more insightful reflection of society than I first noticed.
