Movie Review: The Social Network

The Social Network (2010)

Directed by David Fincher

Written by Aaron Sorkin

Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer, Justin Timberlake, Rooney Mara

Releease Date October 1st, 2010 

Published September 30t, 2010

For the past five years Facebook has been rising through our culture and becoming a phenomenon. It's a phenomenon that does not merely exist on its own but captures the rise to predominance of online culture vs. all other forms of discourse. Lives are lived online as much as they are in real life in many cases and much of those lives date back to one night when one 20-year-old college kid had a few beers and banged out the computer code that would cause a social networking revolution.

David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin's "The Social Network" is the mostly true story of Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), the purported founder of Facebook. There is some question as to whether Mark, now the world's youngest billionaire at 26 years old, actually came up with the idea or if he stole it, adapted it and reaped the rewards. The film takes its shape from depositions in two different lawsuits filed against Zuckerberg by friends and attempted colleagues.

Writer Ben Mezrich used the depositions as well as numerous interviews and investigative reporting as the basis for his sensational book "The Accidental Billionaires" which comes to thrilling and enthralling life onscreen as "The Social Network." Under the expert direction of David Fincher and the whip crack, witty dialogue of writer Aaron Sorkin, the founding of one website and the personalities behind it becomes a dialogue about the modern internet culture and a commentary on the direction of society.

Flashbacks begin and end in "The Social Network" with crash cuts to Mark Zuckerberg sitting in an entirely irritated state in a lawyer's office. Eduardo Severin (Andrew Garfield), Zuckerberg's former best friend and the man who put up the money to start Facebook and Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (Armie Hammer, in a remarkably non-showy, dual role) are suing Zuckerberg over Facebook but for very different reasons.

Forget the merits of either suit, it's clear Severin had a real beef while the Winklevoss's and their partner Divya Narenda were grasping at straws having simply a generic idea that they asked Zuckerberg to code for them and failed to administer on their own, the lawsuits are merely the ordering device. The meat of "The Social Network" is in the extraordinary casting, acting and writing as well as David Fincher's remarkable talent for setting a scene. 

Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg as a social illiterate who sees other people as a means to an end. We see at the start of the film a fictional account of Mark on a date with a girl played by Rooney Mara. It's evident to us, if not immediately to her, that Mark has no real interest in her beyond the physical need to be a normal 20 something male being seen in public with an attractive woman. Mara's character is a device but a terrific one; the date establishes who Mark is, his motivations and desires and the scene is filled with smart, fast paced, witty dialogue that gets the movie off to a running start.

Eisenberg owns the screen in this opening scene; his words fly like Edward Norton's fists in "Fight Club" and are occasionally as devastating. David Fincher's "Fight Club" was an indictment of consumer and pop culture disposability and "The Social Network" picks up where "Fight Club" left off by cutting the computer chord that binds the audience to Facebook and showing us the true face of social media, the good the bad and the ugly.

Opposite Eisenberg is Andrew Garfield as the much maligned and abused Facebook co-founder and CFO Eduardo Saverin. Eduardo is the genius and sap who made several hundred thousand dollars as a very young man, pledged some of that money to Mark Zuckerberg and watched his supposed friend attempt to jettison him from the company they founded together. Through Garfield's fierce yet sensitive performance we see how Saverin was seduced, betrayed and bewildered by Zuckerberg and the fast paced, wired world of Facebook.

Justin Timberlake is a lightning bolt of humor and charisma as Sean Parker, the former Napster founder who dazzled Zuckerberg by being the social butterfly Zuckerberg could never be but envied deeply. Parker is the high side of Internet culture, the freewheeling good times, the connections that work out and the potential for trouble that can arise from making connections with people you don't know. He is the polar opposite to Andrew Garfield's Saverin, whose story is another more truthful metaphor for the online experience of attempting to connect with friends and strangers in an online wasteland of forgettable status updates.

Facebook and the culture of social networking are by nature, not important. It brings little to nothing of value to the world. It is the intangible equivalent to candy. It's sweet and tasty or it can be souring, even disgusting. It can brighten your day or make you sick but in the end, Facebook, MySpace and the rest have no value beyond the metaphorical sugar high of faux connectedness.

The strength of "The Social Network" as crafted by David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin lies in recognizing the emptiness of the Facebook world and using the real life creators and their stories as a means of exposing the emptiness. Vapid status updates, perfunctory friend requests and questionable relationship statuses are the heart of Facebook and through the characters of "The Social Network" the stark reality of social networking becomes resonant, jarring messages for audiences merely expecting the sex, drugs and computer coding behind the pop phenomena of Facebook.

In "Fight Club" Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter watched the world fall apart around them as they held hands and connected truly for the first time. Facebook and the world of social networking comes crashing down in "The Social Network" and the witnesses are us, the audience, many of whom have spent far too much time taking Facebook far too seriously.

Movie Review Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go (2010)

Directed by Mark Romanek

Written by Alex Garland 

Starring Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley, Sally Hawkins, Charlotte Rampling 

Release Date September 15th, 2010

Published November 4th, 2010 

The wonderful thing about “Never Let Me” Go is how its languorousness invites the viewer to project a meaning onto it. Yes, that projection requires ignoring a few things about the characters and what is happening on screen but there is something valuable and even entertaining about a movie that gives the viewer so much room to move around. Some have found parallels to the holocaust. The great Roger Ebert finds a modern equivalent in the sad fate of workers at big box stores like Wal-Mart. Other critics acknowledge a philosophical truth in the film that is just out of their grasp but somehow knowing it is there is enough for them.

Strangely, I find myself somewhere within that last group. I too want to believe and have searched for various philosophic or metaphoric meanings in Mark Romanek's gorgeous direction and Alex Garland's teasing screen adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's moving if also vaguely interpreted novel.

Kathy (Carey Mulligan) fell in love with Tommy when both were young students at an out of the way private school somewhere in the English countryside. Kathy was a self conscious introvert with the soul of an artist. Tommy was an outcast prone to violent rages that only served to make him even more of an outcast.

The center of their world is their relationship with Ruth (Keira Knightley) a popular girl who befriended Kathy in search of a worshiper and fell in with Tommy as a way of preventing that worship from being cast elsewhere. It's clear to us and especially clear to Ruth that Tommy and Kathy should be together but her insecure need for their attention supersedes her ability to let her friends be happy.

This is especially tragic because Hailsham is not merely a country boarding school and the students are not really students at all. As explained in excruciating detail by one of the teachers, Miss Lucy (Sally Hawkins), Hailsham students will have painfully short lives in which they will donate their organs until they complete, a nicer way of saying they are spare parts until they die.

The brilliance of “Never Let Me Go” is not in setting up a life or death situation but in the real human ways that these characters take in this extraordinary information and assimilate this knowledge as part of who they are rather than the going concern of some sci fi story of survival.

The arc of the average life is played out with a timeline in mind that lasts a lot longer in our minds than in reality. For Kathy, Tommy and Ruth the arc of birth, life and death is compacted into a mere 30 years at most yet they grow and age and live as if a full life were lived.

They cram their short lives with experiences of love and compassion that a longer life no doubt takes for granted. When Kathy finally gets the opportunity to be with Tommy she doesn't spend much time lamenting, they get right to loving and while there is temporary hope for more life, Kathy is not so concerned about prolonging love as she is about enjoying what she has.

Ruth's is the saddest of all of the stories. Her life is marked by pettiness and a greed for attention. She found weaker kids and forced herself on their attention and in her fight to remain at the center of their world she destroyed them and herself, robbing all of them of the little life they could have had.

Carey Mulligan deserved an Oscar for her work in “Never Let Me Go.” The heart, the love and the compassion she portrays is the heartbreaking force of the film. A soul as wide and as deep as Kathy's deserved more than to be an organ bank and yet that is not what the film is about, it's about what life she brings to what little life she has and much of that is played on Mulligan's wonderfully expressive face.

Mark Romanek captures the essence of Ishiguro's novel in ways that most directors likely would not. Like Ishiguro, Romanek is not really interested in the grander political points about breeding humans for their organs. Rather, that is the setting for telling human stories about what real people would do in these circumstances. The fate of these characters lends a certain tragedy to them but that tragedy is compounded by what unique, fascinating and thoughtful beings these characters are.

The political points, the metaphors and meanings are ours to bring to the film. What Carey Mulligan, director Mark Romanek and screenwriter Alex Garland are focused on are the human beings and the lives they live against this unique and tragic background. It's a wonderfully experimental ploy and it works brilliantly as a movie that makes you think for yourself and moves you deeply.

Movie Review: The Eyes of Tammy Faye

The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021) 

Directed by Michael Showalter 

Written by Abe Sylvia 

Starring Jessica Chastain, Andrew Garfield, Vincent D'Onofrio, Cherry Jones 

Release Date September 17th, 2021 

Published December 24th, 2021 

A trope that has become overused in biopics is the necessity to provide a literal explanation for something that becomes part of the life of a famous person after they become famous. With that in mind, I was prepared with a heavy sigh and an eye roll while watching the biopic, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, all about the life of Tammy Faye Bakker, played by Jessica Chastain. As I started the movie, I girded myself for a very literal explanation of why Tammy Faye began wearing garish clown-like makeup. 

What a surprise then to see that the main explanation of Tammy’s love for makeup was simply because she liked makeup. The backstory of Tammy Faye’s makeup gets a very brief scene at the very start of the movie and is mostly left behind as Tammy’s true obsession is revealed to be religion and being completely oblivious. Credit goes to director Michael Showalter who makes many smart choices in how to bring the unusual life of Tammy Faye Bakker to the big screen. 

The Eyes of Tammy Faye stars Jessica Chastain in the role of Tammy Faye Bakker and Andrew Garfield as her husband, con-man conservative Christian talk show host, Jim Bakker. The two met at a bible college in Minnesota. Here, Jim preached prosperity gospel, much to the dismay of his professors but to the great delight of his classmate, Tammy Faye. It was, and likely remains, Jim Bakker’s belief that God wants certain people to have great wealth and anyone with great wealth is therefore blessed by God. 

Never mind all of that stuff Jesus said about the poor, Jim Bakker was not one who believed that there was divinity in poverty. Thus he set out to be rich by any means necessary. After marrying Tammy Faye, Jim took Tammy Faye on the road where they preached the gospel and Jim took out loans and raised money for their personal needs via the many church congregations that accepted him as a guest preacher. 

Meanwhile, Tammy Faye also had her eyes on the horizon, searching for her big break. That break comes when Tammy Faye incorporates a puppet show into their preaching and singing and it gets seen by leaders of the Christian Broadcast Network, owned and operated by Pat Robertson (Gabriel Olds) and Jerry Falwell (Vincent D’Onofrio). They jump at the chance to bring the young and talented Jim and Tammy Faye aboard for a kids show but Jim has bigger plans. 

After finding success with children, Jim pitches himself as the host of a late night religious talk show that would be called The 700 Club. This comes at a cost however, to his marriage as a pregnant Tammy Faye is left off of the show and sulks at home. Before long Tammy Faye is demanding that Jim spend time with her while also getting in his ear about how they should be making more money. It’s Tammy Faye who plants the seeds that would become their crowning achievement, PTL, Praise the Lord the cable channel. 

Here is where Jim and Tammy Faye would find multi-million dollar success but also eventually find their grave downfall. As successful as the PTL was, Jim’s dedication to prosperity gospel drove him to constantly spending more than the PTL was bringing, especially spending it on himself while allowing Tammy Faye to shop to her heart’s content. While Jim desperately chases every dollar, Tammy Faye quickly comes to recognize the emptiness of their lives and the conflict between Jim and Tammy Faye eventually spills into their very public downfall. 

It’s a good story but not one that translates easily to a film narrative. Despite what The Eyes of Tammy Faye might want you to believe, Tammy Faye is not an entirely sympathetic character. Some might be able to buy Tammy Faye as a naïve innocent, as Jessica Chastain plays her, but reality also indicates that Tammy Faye was as or even more ambitious than her husband. Even as she may have been a victim of her husband's duplicitousness, she very much indulged and enjoyed the lifestyle trappings that his scheming made possible. 

The Eyes of Tammy Faye quite often tips into hagiography, as if the filmmakers and star Jessica Chastain were striving to make Tammy Faye a martyr and a counterpoint to her con-man husband. I say that but I don't say it with a great deal of confidence, especially after a final scene that appears to push the film into an area of camp that seems to both deify and deflate the legacy the film had been building for Tammy Faye. The final moments highlight a problem with The Eyes of Tammy Faye that's difficult to explain. 

For most of the movie, it doesn't appear that the film has a sense of humor regarding Tammy Faye, she's not being pitied or parodied. The final act, and especially the final scene of the movie, are the first time we get a sense of what I know I was looking for in the film, a slightly more savage and unrelenting look at Tammy Faye. In the final scene, the film reaches a remarkable climax that is both high camp and genuinely emotional. It's a moment where the potential of The Eyes of Tammy Faye emerges. Sadly, it emerges to late to rescue the movie and instead serves to highlight the tone that was missing from the first two acts of The Eyes of Tammy Faye. 

Ultimately, I am mixed on The Eyes of Tammy Faye. I adored the ending and I loved elements of Jessica Chastain's full bodied performance as Tammy Faye. The problem, for me, appears to be that Chastain started to like Tammy Faye and feel protective of her. That appears at times to be at odds with the tone that director Michael Showalter is going for. The disconnect between her desire to do justice to Tammy Faye and Showalter's high wire act attempt to bridge Chastain's performance into his more savage send up of Tammy Faye, ultimately short circuits both Chastain and Showalter's efforts. 

Movie Review Lions for Lambs

Lions for Lambs (2007)

Directed by Robert Redford 

Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan 

Starring Robert Redford, Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, Michael Pena, Andrew Garfield 

Release Date November 9th, 2007

Published November 8th, 2007 

A valuable dialogue on the most important topics of our times is well engaged in Robert Redford's Lions For Lambs. Inter-cutting three different stories, unfolding simultaneously, and one important flashback, Lions For Lambs fails in structure but succeeds for its intentions. The inescapable issue is how tremendously un-cinematic Lions For Lambs is. Maybe I'm grasping, but a movie needs to be more than the sum of its windy pretenses. Even as someone who agrees wholeheartedly with the message, the message fails in the milieu and good intentions bog down for lack of a more compelling cinematic arc.

Robert Redford directs and stars in Lions For Lambs as a political science professor, everyone just calls him doc. This morning Doc is early to chat with Todd (Andrew Garfield) , a student with a sharp mind who refuses to apply himself and often just doesn't show up. The war and the government has so disillusioned young Todd that apathy has set in. For the next hour Doc attempts to awaken the engaged mind of this student with so much potential.

As that is happening in California, a journalist (Meryl Streep) has arrived in the office of a young Senator (Tom Cruise) who, years earlier, she had proclaimed the 'future of the Republican party.' The senator took the hyperbolic headline to heart and now wishes to repay her unintentional compliment with a real important scoop. As the two chat, a military operation that the senator helped plan is getting underway. He hopes that telling the journalist this story will help him with another front page headline to add to his presidential resume.

Meanwhile, the soldiers assigned to carry out the new strategy have left the comfort of the American base in Bagram on their way to a remote, hilly region of Afghanistan, dangerously close to the Iran border and covered in snow. A gun battle causes PFC's Finch (Derek Luke) and Rodriguez (Michael Pena) to fall out of a transport copter into an enemy nest. Surrounded, they must conserve their ammo, nurse their wounds, and deal with the cold as they await a rescue.

Each of these three storylines, written by the very talented Matthew Michael Carnahan, dovetails off of the other with modest detail. Using Mark Isham's quietly compelling score to link one scene to the next, Redford makes no pretense about what his point is. Lions For Lambs is about excoriating cowards who make decisions in Washington while our lions are sent off to die to protect these lambs. It's a heavy handed point but a well made one, especially if it already speaks to your beliefs as this film does mine.

I've opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning and listening to Robert Redford and Meryl Streep make the points that I have already made myself, in various arguments over Iraq, is quite affecting for me. However, it may mean nothing to you. If you are for the war, a supporter of the President and his policies, you won't like much of Lions For Lamb. The film is unabashedly, unashamedly liberal and that, at the very least, is bold especially just a mere three years after the Dixie Chicks were threatened with death and the end of their careers for speaking out.

Times change quickly and now a spate of Hollywood heavyweights have taken on the war to varying results. In The Valley of Elah, The Kingdom, Redacted, Rendition and a number of documentaries have taken on the war to varying degrees of success. Robert Redford delivers, arguably, the most thoughtful film of the bunch but also the least cinematic. Sorry, but we need more than just actors speechifying for over an hour. The film lacks dynamism and feels stultifying by being limited to a one speech after another structure. 

There is little to no visual accomplishment to Lions For Lambs. Don't get me wrong, it is professionally shot, but only a few scenes, those set in the mountains of Afghanistan, manage to be visually compelling. The rest is just a series of conversations shot almost statically in two shots broken up by the occasional showy camera move or tight close up.

Tom Cruise has the most difficult role in the film, that of the conservative voice, a strawman for the liberal messaging of the movie. His ambitious Senator may look like John Edwards but he talks like Dick Cheney. Jousting with Streep's skeptical journalist, Cruise more than holds his own. His character being a natural villain, a congressman and snake oil salesman, he is doomed to be outwitted but he doesn't go down without a fight.

Watch how Cruise regulates that star charm, holding back on that natural glint in his eye. It's an extraordinary effort because the man is effortlessly charismatic. He literally has to dial it down to play a charismatic congressman. In Lions For Lambs Cruise brings just the perfect mixture of political savvy, ugly ambition and earnest passion. He's the kind of villain who doesn't see himself as the villain and those are the best kinds of villains. 

Lions For Lambs ends with a poignant offering of why Redford chose this title. I won't spoil it for you but I will say that anyone who questions Redford's patriotism and commitment to our troops will have not seen these final gut wrenching scenes. In the end, Lions For Lambs should be far better than it is. The subject matter deserves a more compelling direction. It needs more than just a series of soapbox declarations and condemnations. Valuable subject matter is rendered inert due to a lack of style that keeps Lions for Lambs from transcending its polemical intentions.