The Social Network

The Social Network is a movie about a guy with Asperger’s Syndrome.  As with many “aspies,” he’s a genius.  Also, as with all aspies, he’s a social incompetent (I’m not casting aspersions.  While genius is a possible side effect of Asperger’s Syndrome, social incompetence is a core symptom.).  He’s smart enough to know that relationships matter and driven enough to pantomime what he perceives to be appropriate behaviors, but he can’t quite get it.  This makes him feel powerless, envious, and angry – why can’t he intuitively do this social interaction stuff that the idiots around him handle so effortlessly?

The guy’s name is Mark Zuckerberg, and he invents Facebook.  Marrying his outsider’s near-clinical observations of how people interact with his genius for computer programming, he figures out how to take the social experience of college and put it on line.  If he can put his thumb in the eyes of those he envies, so much the better.*

But he’s an aspie.  He can’t intuit whether or not someone’s a fraud.  He can’t intuit who his real friends are.  He can’t intuit how to run a relationship, much less a business, because people and their natural social organizations don’t work with the clear, understandable, and unerring precision of computer code.  He can only learn the way you might learn how to do something for which you have no talent: by flailing around until he gets it right.  When he flails around, people get hurt.  When people get hurt and realize he’s now a very wealthy man, they sue.

That’s the core of the movie, and it’s the core of the tragedy of the character of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network.  To get us there, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin captures the rhythm of Asperger’s conversation and the calculating, intellectualized nature of Asperger’s interaction.  Jesse Eisenberg, playing Zuckerberg under David Fincher’s direction, redefines his career with this performance.  Together, they capture the singlemindedness of Asperger’s; the sublimated rage of disability; and the helplessness of a young man who’s too smart to realize that, in some ways, he isn’t smart at all.

The Social Network itself seems a bit cold, a bit clinical.  It thinks too much and feels not nearly enough.  But that’s the point, isn’t it?  The Social Network is unblinking in its perception and devastating in its conclusions.  I can’t wait to discuss it with my friends.

*There’s a catch, and you need to know this.  I have it on very good authority that the book upon which this film is based is poorly researched claptrap.  The character of “Mark Zuckerberg,” as depicted in the film, may not reflect the actual guy.

Zodiac

ZODIAC is a terrific film, once you get past the fact that it isn't about Zodiac.

Director David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club, Panic Room) gives the movie a completely absorbing feel, beginning with '60s -era Paramount and Warner Brothers production logos. He casts it with a veritable all-star roster of character actors (Brian Cox, Elias Koteas, Phillip Baker Hall - hey, where's Jim Beaver?) and stars with the hearts of character actors (Jake Gyllenhall, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey, Jr.). He shocks us early with the violence of the Zodiac murders, and then pulls back into one of the most interesting takes on the procedural I've ever seen.

I walked into this movie thinking it would be, essentially, Jake Gyllenhaal and the Quest for the Zodiac. Fincher fools us into
believing that would be the case; but he takes long detours into the life of Inspector David Toschi (Ruffalo), a then-famous member of the SFPD who served as the models for both Bullitt and Dirty Harry; and shorter ones into the life of Paul Avery (Downey, turning in another in a long list of memorable performances). Gyllenhall's the obsessive, the guy who's fascinated by the Zodiac killings and just can't let it go, at the expense of his relationship with his wife and children. Toschi's the professional, the guy who does this for a living and, for all his notoriety, comes across as the most balanced individual in the entire enterprise. Downey, well, he's a shipwreck waiting for a shoal, and Zodiac provides that shoal as he lets his own
fascination with the case drag him down.

Most procedurals are about the details of hunting down a given criminal, normally culminating in a car chase or a shootout. This procedural is about those same details, but it's also about the nature of obsession. The main characters deal with it in different ways, and the film itself does a wonderful job letting us dip a vicarious toe into that whirlpool, ourselves. It works - by the third act, I was so thoroughly hooked that I lost track of my surroundings and nearly missed my Metro stop.

After seeing a string of kids' movies and foreign pictures, I was ready for a modern American drama. ZODIAC delivered.