on The Social Network

Which I suppose is appropriate because today is Valentine's Day and I love this movie, and because I want to post this before the Oscars, which I honestly don't think TSN will win. Except maybe for best adapted screenplay and best editing. Whatever those categories are called.

DISCLAIMER: If you didn't like The Social Network, you should probably just mark this as read. Or you could read it and get really inflamed about why I like it, but I hear inflammation's not good for your skin. Also, this post will probably bore you because it has no pictures. Also, I italicize for emphasis too much in this post. Also, I am definitely a The Social Network fangirl. Also, the fandom on tumblr ships Jewnicorns, and if you haven't heard the term yet, just tumblr-search TSN and, if you are like me, you will be both extremely amused and a little creeped out, but mostly amused.

TL;DR: I like The Social Network. Judge me.

Despite the fact that I don't have a Facebook account, I find myself a complete sucker for this movie for several reasons:

1. Aaron Sorkin, for whose dialogue I now have a gravitationally large amount of respect, especially because he mentioned in an interview that he doesn't do plot well; he does people talking in rooms, and as someone who used to turn scripts in to her theater group that averaged 1 minute per 2 pages of dialogue, I get that. And the first thing I'm planning on watching after my Netflix free trial expires is West Wing. Or Sports Night, if I can find it.
   


2. David Fincher's tilt-shift Henley Royal Regatta scene. Justin Timberlake called the ad exec scene Aaron Sorkin's cameo; the Regatta scene is David Fincher's cameo.






3. Andrew Garfield's slightly Brazilian, slightly Miami(an) accent and his physicality as Eduardo Saverin. As a linguistics student, I just dig the decent accent, period, (nothing like Audrey Hepburn's My Fair Lady abomination), especially because you know he's fighting his default British accent. In terms of physicality, honestly, watch him in interviews to see how Andrew Garfield the person moves, then watch him in Boy A and Red Riding: 1974 and Never Let Me Go. His body language shifts precisely and comfortably.
   


4. Jesse Eisenberg's nuanced line deliveries and obvious theater background. He just works with words so well. (If you doubt me, see how he handles his mouthfuls of lines in The Living Wake and pretty much every inflection he makes in Zombieland.)
   


5. I actually really liked Justin Timberlake in this movie. He is so gross. He's like a really slippery eel. Covered in lesions and hairy moles. But wearing Louboutins and carrying a Chanel handbag, or something. Coated in butter. I don't know.
   


6. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for this movie are absolutely genius. Every time I hear "Hand Covers Bruise," I feel deeply unsettled, like a thousand gears are turning my head and I'm about to drunk-blog and compare women to each other to rate their hotness. (Well. Unsettled, anyway. Like everything is falling out of my grasp and I need to figure out how to keep something, anything, under my control.)
   


7. I completely understand Andrew Garfield describing Eduardo's relationship to Mark as being "his boyfriend in every way but a sexual way." And it is heartbreaking to watch if you have ever felt like that about someone. Like a mother, almost, except you have a breaking point, one that you never would have expected to reach, not with that one person whom you would forgive everything if only they realized how much they hurt you.
   


8. As part of the generation dubbed "The Millennials" (couldn't they have called us the zeroes instead? The empty sets? The nothings? Oh wait, is that too bleak?), I'm inclined to see the movie's Mark Zuckerberg as a hero and an artist, not a traitor or a thief. It's not about money; it's about doing something huge. It's about not wanting to be mediocre. (It's about distinguishing yourself in a population of people who all got 1600 on their SATs; can you tell this is the part that hits home for me?)


9. And yet under all that, it's a story about belonging to something, about isolation, success, friendship, loyalty, betrayal, and power (or powahhh if you're Andrew Garfield). It's about turning what hurts you into something that makes you stronger and about what we choose to value. It's human. [EDIT: The thing is, I think that anyone who doesn't feel like this movie had enough of an emotional core wasn't young enough when Livejournal was still the preferred blogging platform, and has never felt like Mark coming home after being painfully socially wounded and retreating into a shell of online respite where you can control everything, and the utter isolation that fuels great bursts of creativity. Mark is bitter when he starts blogging about Erica Albright and, frankly, it was fucking shameful to watch because I know I have that in me. That is all.]
   

After the jump, a truly disgusting number of snippets from the screenplay, because I am smitten. (Actually I realize the jump message is going to say "I write stuff after the jump," but that's a lie. Aaron Sorkin writes stuff after the jump.)

I write stuff after the jump.