Review - The Social Network

Poster image taken from here

Director: David Fincher
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake
Rating: 1/5

Before I begin, I would like to establish the following:
*The Social Network is considered to be an incredible film by both the public and by critics
*Popular opinion is referring to it as the 'movie of the year'
*Whether or not YOU took it seriously is immaterial. The orld takes it seriously and hence, it requires examination

'Facebook' is a product that has impacted millions of lives from across the globe. It has revolutionized the rather dubious umbrella term of 'Social Media' and today agencies are at liberty to charge companies exorbitant amounts of money for something a thirteen year old might do. It is undeniable that Facebook has left its still-growing-mark on the world and it would seem only logical, that a film be made about its creators. Moreover, Mark Zuckerberg - the inventor of Facebook is the world's youngest billionaire and there are people exclaiming, "Hey! That guy's even younger than I am!” They are still wondering how he made all that money. So it would appear apt that a film about such an individual should be made. However, for such an enterprise to be justified, some basic questions must be answered: Is the conception of Facebook worth dramatizing and is Mark Zuckerberg's life worth turning into a film?

The Story

Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is an unpopular student at Harvard who walks into the spotlight after he creates a web application that allows students to rank their female classmates on their looks. The application is such a huge success that it causes the Harvard servers to crash, just a few hours after going public. However, Zuckerberg isn't alone in this endeavour. He is helped by his wealthier, best friend Eduardo Saverin - whose popularity causes Zuckerberg to be secretly jealous of him. The motif of jealousy is incessantly reinforced throughout the film and Zuckerberg is evidently an unsavory character. Following the success of Zuckerberg's 'rank your classmates' idea, he is approached by fellow Harvardmates Divya Narendra and the Winklevoss twins, with the idea of Facebook. Zuckerberg is a computer programmer and they are not.

Now, it must be noted that throughout the film, Zuckerberg is obsessed with getting into the one of the private fraternities at Harvard - one that is comprised of the most popular Harvard alumni. Narendra and the Winklevoss twins are recruiters for one of these clubs. However, when they approach Zuckerberg, it is not with an extended invitation to join their club but with the idea of creating Facebook. Zuckerberg agrees to develop the site for them.

With financial aid from Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerberg develops Facebook behind the backs of Narendra and the Winklevoss twins. He then meets the creator of Napster, Shawn Parker (Timberlake) and Facebook begins to grow exponentially, becoming increasingly popular by the hour. Zuckerberg is so scheming, that he even cheats Saverin and takes away his share of the company.


Finally, he is sued by both Saverin and the team of Narendra and the Winklevoss'. He pays a settlement of 66 million dollars to the latter party and 'figures things out' with Saverin. The film ends.

Scrutiny

So back to our initial question - "Is the story of the creation of Facebook worth turning into a film?" The answer is no. That an individual got incredibly rich through a moderately intelligent invention are not enough grounds for us to want to know his story. Do we, for instance, also have a film about the creators of USB? Or do we have a film about Colonel Sanders? KFC is far more controversial than Facebook and we could even have Phillip Seymour Hoffman playing Colonel Sanders! So why specifically a film about the creators of Facebook? Because its inventor cheated four people and, later paid them fairly large settlements in court? Absolutely not! People cheat each other everyday. People sue each other everyday. People pay massive settlements everyday. So that is not reason enough to turn it into a film.

That leaves us with Mark Zuckerberg's ‘genius’. In the film, Zuckerberg is portrayed as an arrogant Einstein. He is incessantly belittling people throughout the film with his scathing sarcasm. There's even a scene in the film where he announces at the hearing that virtually no one else is intellectually incapable of producing anything like Facebook. Let's just stop right here. 'Intellectually capable'? Is he serious? For the record, Facebook is not the first of its kind. Similar sites like Orkut and Hi5 preceded it. Facebook is simply the most popular of the lot and this is largely attributed to the amount of privacy it allows users. That does not constitute genius. The filmmaker cannot convince us that it is a work of genius either and he simply endorses this claim. The film is filled with incredibly mundane conversations between the various characters, but by throwing in bits of jargon and words that aren't generally used in conversation, he makes it seem like the characters are discussing something profound. For example, in the opening scene, when Mark Zuckerberg talks about college affairs, he does so with the air of someone discussing relativity. There is also a section in the film where we see snatches of Zuckerberg writing 'code' and convolutedly explaining what he's doing. All this is perhaps, in the service of his ‘genius’.

There are people who argue that Facebook is one of the most powerful 'social media networking tools' in existence. However, we must acknowledge that what Facebook is today is not only because of Zuckerberg. It is primarily because of the number of independent developers from all over the world who have designed applications for it. Facebook was created by Zuckerberg, but it was developed by programmers from all over the world. Zuckerberg is less of a genius than an entrepreneur with few moral qualms.

The Social Network is not a badly made film. David Fincher is one of the more competent Hollywood directors and it is very slick. The performances are not miserable. Jesse Eisenberg is convincing as an unscrupulous person. After I watched the film, I learnt that Trent Reznor of 'Nine Inch Nails' was responsible for the music. I cannot recall a single piece of background music from the film and I am too infuriated to watch it again for its music.

Sulk Station - Wait

Video shot on a Kodak Zi8

Be sure to check out the band here

Sir Laezie Smokalot

The first of a series, Sir Laezie Smokalot is a character that remembered by his hatred for Elvis.

Sulk Station - Poster Design

This was designed for a gig in Bangalore. The even had the following artists performing

Sulk Station (Bangalore)
Andreas Otto (Germany)

while the gig was put on hold due to certain difficulties, the poster...well...it wasn't going anywhere...so I put it up here.

Be sure to check out Sulk Station here

First Person Frisbee

Sulk Station

This video was made by someone I know

Contentment - Sulk Station from Peepingtom Yogensha on Vimeo.

You can check out Sulk Station here

The Lord of the Files

In the late 1950s, office stationery across the world was plagued by an evil force...
...that was born of a typo.

Insomniac

Fast asleep, or wide awake, he was always wide awake.

Paradise Cafe

It was definitely strange. Heavenly, but a little too familiar. He dropped his fork in horror when he realized it was cologne.

Whispering Dogs

Nobody ever found out what was said.

The Breakfast of Champions

The Spanish team fought strong and hard,
To quench their victory thirst.
And as they embraced their fate as stars,
They were eaten for breakfast.

Review - Inception

*Poster image found randomly on google.com

Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Leonardo Dicaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Rating: 2/5

‘Reality’ is a subject that thinkers cannot but speculate about and cinema has also followed with its own explorations. Especially in more recent times, with advancements in technology, film directors have been enabled to translate ideas of a more abstract nature into something tangible. Over time, this has encouraged younger filmmakers to focus on original, ‘never-before-conceived’ ideas. Over the last decade, the Matrix Trilogy took the world by storm. These films (primarily the first one) played an important role in creating a new standard for the ‘conceptual’ cinema that followed. This, combined with the rapidly changing world – now equipped with facebook, twitter and several other tools for its virtual extension - subject matter dealing with ‘identity’ and ‘reality’ became highly popular. Plots were no longer orderly because the greatness of ideas needed to be demonstrated and the audience needed to be convinced that these ideas were complex. But with more and more of these conceptually ‘complex’ films flooding the market, mainstream cinema has become grotesquely showy – like a carnival of bearded women – with each one trying to show off the most extravagant beard. Of course, not all the beards are the same – they can be streaked, cut, curled and twisted into newer shapes. However, one must keep in mind, that at bottom of it all, they’re only phony beards.

Christopher Nolan’s Inception is one of this year’s more ‘complex’ films. It has already made quite an impression and has everyone, from the critics to the public, raving about it. Inception stars Leonardo Dicaprio (recently recovering from a tryst with ‘reality’ in Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island), who plays a thief named Cobb. Only, Cobb is no ordinary thief. He literally breaks into people’s minds and steals their ideas. The process is fairly simple: An empty world is virtually created, into which the victim and Cobb’s team are placed. This is done by physically plugging the participants into a device when they are asleep.

This empty world works very much like an empty cupboard. When the victim dreams, s/he fills it up with his/her thoughts, turning them into phenomena that are more accessible and stealable by the others. It is just like someone unknowingly using your empty cupboard by filling it with their personal, most prized belongings, giving you complete access to them.

Cobb’s new assignment, however, is not to steal an idea, but to plant one. The term given to this is ‘inception’ – a procedure that is generally perceived as impossible but not for Cobb. For an idea to grow in someone’s head, it must be planted deep inside the consciousness, so that the individual believes that the idea is his/her own. Going deeper into the consciousness would mean to have a dream inside a dream. For the process of inception, one must be deep inside the person’s head. For this to happen, Cobb’s team must create a dream inside a dream inside a dream – three levels of dreaming.

Inception is packed with gunfire, laborious special effects and effortless performances that make it an entertaining watch. However, the plot is excessively convoluted and between flashbacks and disappearing into people’s heads, the film turns into a mess. Several other elements, such as Cobb’s relationship with his dead wife, also complicate the film. It is here, in this mess, that we realize that perhaps Nolan isn’t the genius that the buzz around him indicates. For example, one aspect is dubious is the location of the ideas that are being stolen. They are kept in high security places, very fortress-like – which is perhaps a play on the term ‘heavily guarded secret’ but it becomes an excuse for gunfire. An individual’s secret being literally locked away in his/her mind suggests too literal an imagination. At one point in the movie, one can even lose track of the number of dream-levels that are being accessed. A dream within a dream within a dream within a…oh well.

Moreover, the idea of breaking into someone’s head to steal an idea does not appear to be particularly original. The thought of manipulating thought, even literally, has been done before in films such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The idea being not too fresh, Nolan’s task is to present in a form that provokes thought, to tease the audience with a logic that has either eluded them or lingers in the back of their heads somewhere. But instead of attending to this task by focusing on the narrative logic, Nolan turns the world he creates into pure spectacle. If Inception draws from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, - especially in Cobb’s interludes with his dead wife – it is only perfunctorily and not in spirit.

Of course, that is not to say the film is a complete failure. Nolan comes through in a few instances, making the film an entertaining watch. While having complete disregard for a lot of elements such as the clutter that comes along with a person’s mind – the information stored in the head, Nolan does do justice to a few, such as the effects of the individual’s physical state in the dream-world. Also, the special effects are remarkable at times and the film is best experienced on a big screen.

Anuka Baratashvili

Red capes are for bosses.

You like? Yes No

Stasys Eidrigevicius

Those pigs are pissed.

You like? Yes No

Aleks Sennwald

That Eskimo is screwed.

You like? - Yes No