Mary is eight years old and she lives in a small town in Australia. She has a birthmark on her forehead, an alcoholic shoplifter for a mother, a pet rooster and a fondness for sweetened condensed milk. Max is a 44 year-old obese Jewish man living in New York. He has some pets (one cat, one parrot and a series of unlucky goldfish), his favourite food is a chocolate hotdog and he has Asperger's Syndrome. They seem the most unlikely companions, but as they strike up an epistolary relationship that lasts for twenty years, we soon learn that they actually share a great deal in common. They are both lonely and sad, and in a world that can often be confusing and cruel, they only have each other.
This unusual friendship is the heart and soul of Mary and Max, Adam Elliot's weird, funny and affecting animated oddity. This is a film produced by the painstaking process of stop-motion, and when you consider how lengthy and laborious this approach is, there's something truly wondrous about the pin-sharp comic timing, the perfectly judged manipulation of tone and the depth of feeling that Mary and Max possesses. Elliot won an Oscar in 2004 for his animated short Harvie Krumpet, and that film gives you an idea of what to expect in his feature debut. The director is unafraid to mix an exaggerated animation style with a story that deals with loneliness, disability and death, and he daringly blends surreal comic touches and imaginative interludes with moments of genuine pain and despair, rarely putting a foot wrong in the process.
Elliot's unique visual sense instantly creates a memorable world for his characters to inhabit. Australia is painted almost entirely in a variety of brown hues – even Mary's eyes are described as "the colour of muddy puddles" – while New York is portrayed in a grim and intimidating monochrome. As Mary and Max send gifts to each other through the post, they bring a little of their own shading into the other's environment, with the red pom-pom supplied by Mary becoming a vibrant presence in Max's world, sitting atop his yarmulke. There's a wonderful attention to detail in the film's production design, and every frame is filled with neat effects and clever little gags. Elliot incorporates some amusing running jokes into the narrative, like the presence of Max's imaginary friend Mr Ravioli, who just sits in the corner reading self-help books, or the frequent occurrence of unusual and often incorrect facts (it has some inventive answers to the question of where babies come from). However, Mary and Max is ultimately a character-driven film, and in its central figures, Elliot has created two of the most memorable and lovable film characters of the year.
In particular, Max is a wonderful piece of characterisation. He is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose towering vocal performance is so good I had no idea it was him until his name appeared in the end credits. He absolutely nails Max's gruff, New York tone, and fills his voice with the melancholy sense of a man who simply doesn't understand the world he lives in. Elliot walks a remarkably fine line between drawing laughs from Max's Asperger's – his inability to recognise expressions and his literal-mindedness is the root of many funny scenes – and dealing with the reality of his condition in a sensitive manner. For her part, Mary evolves over the course of the film, beginning as a picture of innocence and curiosity, before unwisely losing sight of what's important in her life and then turning her life around after hitting rock bottom. She is voiced as a youngster by Bethany Whitmore and then by Toni Collette, who does a superb job of charting Mary's fluctuating emotions, while the target of Mary's affections – the stuttering Damien Popodopolous – is played perfectly well by an underused Eric Bana.
Mary and Max is narrated by Barry Humphries, whose voiceover has a measured and lyrical air, and the film as a whole is a triumph of storytelling. Elliot delivers complex, flawed and entirely empathetic characters and paces his narrative with complete confidence as he charts the back-and-forth between Mary and Max, the moments of connection, anger and heartbreak that they share. This is as touching and convincing a portrait of friendship as I have seen in a film for some time, and in its climactic scenes it delivers a huge emotional impact. Mary and Max has taken a long time to reach UK cinemas – I first saw it over a year ago – but now that it has arrived on these shores I can finally recommend it unreservedly. It's a beautiful, imaginative and deeply moving achievement, and undoubtedly one of the finest films of the year.
Another Year
A lot of people might look at Another Year's cast list and subject matter and simply assume that it's Mike Leigh working in familiar territory, but I hope they don't overlook the brilliance that is frequently on display here. This study of families, ageing and loneliness strikes me as one of the director's most ambitious works, a film that explores weighty themes and finds a resonant balance between humour and pain. Much of that humour is exhibited by Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen), a long-married couple who appear to be perfectly content with life, and their son Joe (Oliver Maltman), who is single but in no particular hurry to change that status. Ruth's friend Mary (Lesley Manville) is a different story, however. Alone and fearing that her only chance of happiness has passed her by, Mary frequently drowns her sorrows in drink, and she has latched onto Tom and Gerri as her only real friends while harbouring a crush on Joe. The joy of this film primarily lies in the performances, with Leigh's working methods once again creating a sense that these actors are really inhabiting their roles. At first, I thought Lesley Manville may be coming on a tad strong as Mary – too nervous and twitchy – but she has some beautiful moments later on, finding incredible pathos in Mary's misguided actions. Dividing his film into four parts, marked by the passing of the seasons, Leigh imposes a steady pace on the drama and allows his scenes to breathe. Other characters enter the narrative at various points, including Peter Wight as a kind of male equivalent to Mary and Imelda Staunton as an extremely unhappy woman whom Gerri is counselling, but Leigh lets them come and go, giving us the sense that their lives are carrying on outside the frame. So many scenes in the film are note-perfect, with one of the finest involving Gerri, who has long been indulgent of Mary's behaviour, finally drawing a line when she begins to upset the happy equilibrium of her family. After the screening last week, my initial thought was that the film ran a little too long in its final 'Winter' section, but the painful silences and the sense of loss so powerfully portrayed in those scenes have lingered with me since then. This is one of Leigh's best films, and the final shot is surely one of the most heartbreaking he has ever filmed.
Southern District (Zona sur)
Southern District director Juan Carlos Valdivia has one gimmick that he recycles endlessly, eventually rendering it ineffective through overuse. As he dissects the decline of a bourgeois Bolivian family, Valdivia's camera circles slowly around the characters, moving constantly through every scene. Initially, the effect recalls Max Ophuls, and I suspected that the director was trying to show how self-absorbed his subjects are in their own world, unaware of the shifting dynamic that is occurring outside the walls of their home. But after a while, I wanted more from Southern District than graceful cinematography, and the flat, staid drama that Valdivia served up failed to suffice. There are some good performances on show and some intriguingly surreal touches, but I never believed that the director was offering any great insight into the social conflict that his film was observing, and it eventually felt like a tedious technical exercise, with little to offer beyond the undeniably stylish camerawork.
Hunting & Sons (Hunting & Zn.)
Oddly, this is the second festival film that I've seen which deals with the adverse psychological effects of pregnancy, but Hunting & Sons is in a different league to Blessed Events. Sander Burger opens his film on happy couple Tako (Dragan Bakema) and Sandra (Maria Kraakman), whose happiness doesn't last long when Sandra unexpectedly discovers she is pregnant. Although the pair don't outwardly display any misgivings, their behaviour gradually alters, with the underweight Sandra being afflicted by a case of body dysmorphia, while Tako becomes an increasingly controlling presence in their relationship. Burger's direction creates an intensity and tension early on with its tight focus on the two main characters and his handling of the film is extremely impressive, particularly when it moves into darker areas late on. At the centre of the picture, real-life couple Bakema and Kraakman are terrific, delivering a convincing portrayal of a couple content with life and each other, and then excelling as a couple slowly tearing themselves apart. Hunting & Sons has a number of shocking sequences that are all the more powerful for the restraint shown in Burger's direction and the utter conviction shown by his actors. It's a disturbing and very impressive piece of work.
Conviction
Why on earth has Conviction been scheduled as one of the London Film Festival's gala screenings? I'd expect to see a film like this appear on Channel 5 on a weekday afternoon, but the star power seems to be duping people into believing that this is something more than a TV movie – believe me, it isn't. It is an amazing true story, though, as Betty Anne Waters, a woman from a poor background with little education, spent almost twenty years studying to become a lawyer and then finding the evidence to overturn her brother's false murder conviction. For a while, I thought director Tony Goldwyn was going to do something interesting with this material, as he played around with the chronology early on, but I quickly realised that this was an aberration, and that his handling of the story would be utterly unimaginative for the majority of the film. Hilary Swank's performance as Betty Anne is underwhelming too, and it's left to the supporting actors to rescue the film; Sam Rockwell as the volatile brother Kenny, an eccentric Juliette Lewis as a key witness and – the best of the bunch – Minnie Driver as Betty Anne's loyal, straight-talking pal. Beyond the acting, this is utterly generic stuff, with so many clichéd sequences that play out exactly as you'd expect them too. Conviction has no desire to surprise or shock its audience – it is safe, conventional and really rather dull. In fact, the most startling twist in the tale is omitted from this account, with no mention of the fact that the real-life Kenny died in a fall just a few months after finally being released from jail. Life can be very, very cruel.
Plans for Tomorrow (Planes para mañana)
This is a strong debut feature from Juana Macías with a collection of fine female performances being particularly noteworthy, even if the storytelling gets a little soapy at times. Plans for Tomorrow tells three separate stories, which are subsequently intertwined. One narrative strand stars Goya Toledo stars as Inés, a 39 year-old businesswoman who discovers she is pregnant, much to the displeasure of both her husband and her boss. Another features Antonia (Carme Elias), who gets a second chance with an old flame, while the third revolves around mother and daughter Marian (Ana Labordeta) and Mónica (Aura Garrido), both of whom are being harassed by Marian's estranged husband. I wish Macías had avoided the contrived structure that has all of these events occurring at precisely the same time and uniting them, Amores perros-style, with a car crash, but I generally saw a lot to admire in her sensitive and subtle direction. The film's more emotional scenes are all carried off skilfully, and her handling of Antonia's story is particularly impressive. The ensemble cast is excellent, with Elias and Garrido standing out, and while Macías threatens to get a little too cute towards the end, I still found Plans for Tomorrow compelling and very touching.
Lemmy
I wasn't sure if I really wanted to see Lemmy, particularly when the press screening was scheduled for 9:30 on a Sunday morning, but I'm glad I made the effort because this documentary is a lot of fun. Co-directors Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski have attained great access to Motorhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister, following him as he goes on tour, hangs out in his favourite bar, shows off his extraordinary collection of war memorabilia and recounts anecdotes from his eventful career. The image one gets of Lemmy is that he's a genuinely nice guy, one who's serious about his music and who is happy with life as long as he has access to his few passions; playing on trivia machines and one-armed bandits, watching Family Guy on the tour bus or driving the occasional tank. The filmmakers have also lined up a remarkable collection of interviewees, with seemingly everyone in the business ready and willing to offer their tributes to the man, and while Lemmy may be accused of being a hagiography, I sensed that this outpouring of love and respect was genuine, and that few people honestly have a bad word to say about the endearingly down-to-earth and self-deprecating rocker. The only misjudgement Olliver and Orshoski make is in the length of their film, with Lemmy feeling overlong and flabby at two hours, with too much footage in the final half-hour feeling repetitive and unnecessary. Aside from that quibble, this is a hugely entertaining and lovingly made portrait of a legendary figure.
Le quattro volte
Set in a rural Italian village, Le quattro volte is a film of quiet contemplation. Director Michelangelo Frammartino has made a film that has the look and feel of a documentary, but you can sense the filmmaker's hand behind the camera, carefully guiding events in front of it. The film opens on elderly shepherd as he slowly ambles and coughs towards death. After he has passed away, life goes on, and Frammartino's camera casually follows it, with his film seemingly attempting to capture something about the passing of time and the inevitable cycle of life. It is a pleasure to watch, for a while. The director stages a couple of deceptively simple sequences that are carried off with some aplomb, and the film is often dryly amusing. However, it does grow slightly tedious and the slow, quiet nature of the film is absurdly soporific. I confess that I nodded off about half way through. I don't think I missed anything particularly significant.
Carlos
The first thing to say about Carlos is that, over the course of five and a half hours, it held my attention almost constantly. Olivier Assayas' epic account of two decades in the life of notorious terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, who became famous throughout the world under his nom de guerre Carlos, is an astonishing feat of filmmaking, with the director's intimate yet dynamic camerawork and sharp editing keeping us on our toes. Although Carlos can feel very episodic, Assayas handles the complexities of the narrative with confidence, trusting that his audience can follow the drama as it moves swiftly from one country to another, introducing a cluster of new characters every couple of minutes and identifying them with onscreen captions. In truth, I did find it hard at times to keep up with the myriad characters, factions and loyalties, but such a sense of helplessness was only fleeting, and more often than not, Carlos pulls you along on its energetic forward momentum. The central performance also keeps you riveted, with the perfectly cast Édgar Ramírez delivering a truly momentous performance as the Jackal. His magnetic, multilingual and physically transformative display is wholly convincing, and the supporting cast matches his efforts, notably the excellent Alexander Scheer and Nora von Waldstätten. Dividing his film into three parts, Assayas gives each segment its own mood, the propulsive, youthful thrust of the first being balanced by the sombre tone of the final section, which deals with Carlos' wilderness years and slow decline. Part 2, the most gripping segment, deals almost completely with the daring OPEC raid of 1975, and Assayas' direction of this long sequence is breathtakingly impressive, sustaining the excitement and tension with consummate skill. Having said all of that, I can't help feeling that there was something missing from Carlos, and I'm not sure if its detailed reconstruction of its subject's world and its undeniable cinematic flair finally goes as deep as it should do. The film is an exhilarating rush – only sagging slightly in the last half hour – but once that sensation has passed, is there enough thematic weight and context here to leave the audience with something to chew over? I'm not sure yet, but in any case, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Carlos, as it is a truly remarkable filmmaking achievement. See it in its full 325-minute version, if you can.
The American
The American is all style. Anton Corbijn's film, an adaptation of the novel A Very Private Gentleman, is beautifully shot, with the director making a spectacular use of both the snowy expanses of Sweden in the opening scene and the small town of Castel del Monte, where world-weary assassin 'Jack' (George Clooney) spends the rest of the movie. In particular, there are a couple of gorgeously lit chase sequences through the narrow Italian backstreets, and the scenes by a secluded lake, where Jack takes improbably stunning prostitute Clara (Violante Placido) have a lovely, idyllic quality. Otherwise, the film is a hollow flop, stuffed full of clichés and painfully obvious symbolism (check out that butterfly!). Clooney works hard to invest his character with some suggestion of depth, but there's nothing there for him to play in this ultra-professional but emotionally closed-off figure. There's also a local priest who has a habit of spewing out words of wisdom that seem suspiciously appropriate to Jack's situation, and a storyline in which the climax is signposted so far in advance I could have taken a stab at it before the opening credits rolled. It's a ponderous and disappointing bore.
Blessed Events (Glückliche Fügung)
Playing out like an obtuse and austere version of Knocked Up, this is certainly one of the most confounding films at this year's festival. Isabelle Stever's Blessed Events stars Annika Kuhl as Simone, a woman who falls pregnant after a random one-night stand and subsequently forms a relationship with the father Hannes (Stefan Rudolf), whom she unexpectedly bumps into when she visits the hospital for tests. Apparently unconcerned by Hannes' habit of staring and grinning idiotically all the time, Simone makes plans to buy a house with her new man, but she seems unsettled, distracted and paranoid, the effects of her pregnancy apparently having an adverse effect on her psychological state. Stever's film could have emerged as an interesting study of natal depression, but it's just bewilderingly awful. Full of inexplicable actions and weird non-sequiturs, the film frequently left me scratching my head as I tried to work out what purpose a number of sequences served, and the one-note nature of the performances (Kuhl is emotionally flat, Rudolf is tiresomely passive) prevents us from gaining any insight into the characters. The director focuses an inordinate amount of attention on trivial side issues, like Simone's desire for a new lawnmower, and she constantly seems to be building towards scenes of tension-releasing anger, before cutting away prematurely. A bearded Arno Frisch wanders in and out of the movie at random intervals, I think Hannes rapes the pregnant Simone at one point (although maybe he doesn't), and the screenplay also contains the line, "If all the fish in the sea die, is the sea dead?" – raising this pertinent question not once, but twice! The director's pacing is glacial, her visual style is ugly and her movie is senseless.
Never Let Me Go
My favourite scenes in Never Let Me Go all occur at the start of the film. The story takes place at Hailsham, an exclusive and isolated school in which children have been created and raised specifically to have their organs harvested. Director Mark Romanek establishes an eerie tone in this initial segment, while efficiently setting up the relationships between Kathy, Tommy and Ruth, the central characters. The performances by these young actors are outstanding, full of subtlety and sensitivity, and Izzy Meikle-Small, who plays young Kathy, bears an uncanny resemblance to Carey Mulligan, who takes the role on when the film jumps forward a few years. After this point, Never Let Me Go never quite gripped me as it did in its early stages, although I found plenty to like and admire in the film. Alex Garland's adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novels is one of his most balanced screenplays (no third-act collapse, thankfully), but the vagueness that works for the film's sense of mystery also works against the picture at times, leaving frustrating questions about the characters' situations unanswered. On the plus side, Carey Mulligan is exceptional, giving the most moving and natural performance in the film and making her co-stars Andrew Garfield and (especially) Keira Knightly looked rather strained in comparison, with Garfield's anguished howl into the darkness just coming off as embarrassing for everyone. Aside from such missteps, Never Let Me Go admittedly doesn't do a great deal wrong, but there's just nothing here to get excited about. It's beautiful but empty, and too timid to be anywhere near as emotionally wrenching as it should be.
Let Me In
Of course, this is something of a pointless exercise. The acclaimed 2008 Swedish film Let the Right One In has already achieved cult status, and this English-language remake doesn't do anything fresh enough with the same material to justify its existence. However, there's still a lot to enjoy in Matt Reeves' version, and if you can forget the first film then this works perfectly well as a sinister and effective horror. The director's best decision in this film is to focus more on the central relationship between the children at the centre of the story, who are here named Abbey and Owen and played by Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-Mcphee. The acting from these two is exceptional, and the emotional connection they establish is the film's driving force. Elsewhere, Reeves plays it pretty safe, and many sequences in Let Me In are almost shot-for-shot retreads of those that Tomas Alfredson staged in the original. He does make a few effective alterations, though, wisely ditching both the cat sequence and the weird non-genital flash that marred Let the Right One In, while adding a fine scene shot entirely from the back seat of a car. There are negatives too – like the constant 80's pop references and the shoddy CGI that turns Abby into a crazed creature when she attacks – but in general, I feel that this film sustains a sinister atmosphere more successfully than the uneven original did, even if it is similarly hobbled by an abrupt and implausible climax. The Swedish picture, however, can still claim the superior title.
LFF notes
One of the oddest and most frustrating things about the festival so far has been the lack of press screenings for some rather high-profile movies. To date, the following films have not been previewed ahead of their public showings: Film socialisme, Route Irish, 13 Assassins, Aurora, Kaboom, Inside Job, Biutiful, Submarine, Catfish, Essential Killing and Surviving Life. The most surprising omission is Biutiful, which is the only one of the gala screenings that is not being shown to the press, although I'm also very surprised that Submarine hasn't been screened yet. Richard Ayoade is doing interviews for the film on the afternoon of the 23rd, but the only screening scheduled is for the night of the 22nd. However, the film I'm most worried about is Film socialisme. It only has one (already sold-out) public screening scheduled during the festival, which every critic will be trying to get into. With so many other films getting at least two (sometimes three or four) screenings, I can't help feeling the organisers have severely underestimated the pull of Godard...
This week, I'm also working on arranging a few interviews, and so far I've got chats lined up with Lucy Walker and Vik Muniz, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Joanna Hogg and Cristi Puiu. Unfortunately, Errol Morris, who I was very excited about interviewing this weekend, has had to cancel his appearance at the festival at the last minute.
There's a great, dark and funny movie to be made about two supervillains battling each other for world domination, but Despicable Me isn't it. This 3D animation has some great ideas and a talented comic ensemble, but it retreats from the edge of anything daring or subversive, playing it safe and never allowing its characters to be, well, despicable. "It's just a kids' movie," you may cry, but that excuse simply doesn't wash anymore (if, indeed, it ever did). Just in the past year or so, mainstream animation has given us films like How to Train Your Dragon, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, and just a few months ago, Pixar's masterful Toy Story 3. That's where the bar has been set, and Disposable Me just doesn't come close.
Things start promisingly enough. The lead villain of the piece is Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), a bald, oddly-shaped fellow with an incongruous Russian accent, who spins around town in his enormous, tank-like car and happily blasts bystanders with his freeze ray. His more dastardly plans, however, don't succeed as often as he would like them to, which is causing some consternation down at the Bank of Evil (a sign above their door reads, "Formerly Lehman Brothers" - the film's best gag). More worryingly, Gru's thunder is constantly being stolen by young upstart Vector (Jason Segel) whose ability to pull off grand heists (such as stealing a pyramid) and his hi-tech wizardry is making Gru look a little old-fashioned. To regain his place as the world's number one crook, Gru begins putting together a plan to steal the moon, and so begins a series of tit-for-tat struggles between Gru and Vector, as they compete to steal the necessary shrink ray and get to the moon first.
Alas, this is about as far as Predictable Me's imagination takes it. Neither Gru nor Vector are strong enough characters to make their battles come to life, with both Carell and Segel's vocal choices feeling at odds with their roles. The only actor to really make his performance work, surprisingly, is Russell Brand, whose work as Gru's grumpy cockney sidekick is excellent, while much of the film's comedy is based around Gru's other assistants, his many minions. These small, yellow creatures, indistinguishable from one another, run around squeaking unintelligibly and get involved in some slapstick fun that occasionally lifts the mood. They have some amusing moments, such as getting shrunk or accidentally sent into space, or going on a shopping trip to buy a toy unicorn, although I lost patience with them when directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud decided to involve them in an impromptu dance sequence.
It feels like the kind of moment that has been shoehorned into the picture to please the masses, whether it belongs there or not, and Underwhelming Me is full of such misguided decisions. The film loses its edge from the minute Gru, for reasons to tedious and strained to recount, decides to adopt three cute little orphans (Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier and Elsie Fisher), who then proceed to gradually melt his heart and making him reconsider his chosen lifestyle. We learn that Gru was never loved enough by his own mother (Julie Andrew) growing up, and the film settles for lots of lesson-learning and hugging, with whatever comic potential it had having long been left behind. Add to this the flat and unpolished animation style and you have a film that's a misfire on every level, a film crippled by a lack of nerve, ambition and imagination. This is the first production from Universal's new family-centred subsidiary Illumination Entertainment, but if they want to mix it up with the animation big boys, they'll have to produce films that are way above the mediocre standard set by Forgettable - sorry - Despicable Me.
The opening and closing scenes of The Social Network feature a female character contemplating Mark Zuckerberg's status as "an asshole." During the course of the film that unfolds between these two points, the character at the centre of the drama is viewed in a variety of lights and from many perspectives. Is he an asshole or a visionary? Is he a devious back-stabber or a naïve nerd whose creation overwhelmed him? To put the question in its most basic terms: hero or villain? David Fincher's film gives us every viewpoint without committing to any of them, and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has tremendous fun playing with the narrative's shifting focus and the irony of the socially inept geek who revolutionised the way people interact with each other. You might think The Social Network is about the creation of Facebook, but it's really about much more than that.
Like most stories, it begins with a girl. The film opens on 19 year-old Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) sitting in a bar with his girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara), who, by the end of the scene, will no longer be his girlfriend. Having viewed their last conversation as a couple, and suffered through Zuckerberg's status-obsessed, narcissistic, casually condescending patter, we can see why she has dumped him, but he returns to his room that night drunk and bitter. He simultaneously decides to pour his foul mood into a nasty blog post insulting Erica and to develop a misogynistic website that allows Harvard males to log on and rate the attractiveness of female students. While he does this, Fincher cuts away to a party that's taking place elsewhere in the building (or maybe in his jealous mind?), with beautiful women drinking and dancing alongside the privileged elite. The kind of party, in other words, that people like Mark Zuckerberg gaze at from the outside.
The seeds of Facebook were sown on this night, or were they? Drawing inspiration from Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires, Sorkin introduces us to Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the identical twin rowing champions who look like they could have stepped out of Leni Riefenstahl's dreams. Played by Armie Hammer and some mind-boggling visual effects, the "Winklevi" (as they are dubbed at one point) approach Zuckerberg with their own idea for a Harvard-exclusive social networking site, and having been impressed by the coding of Facemash, they want him to help create it. He agrees, disappears without any further contact, and the next thing they know, Facebook is the biggest thing on the internet.
The Social Network's screenplay operates on three levels. As well as detailing the site's origin story, Sorkin and Fincher cut between two court cases, as Zuckerberg is sued not only by the Winklevoss brothers and their partner Divya Narendra (Max Minghella) but, in a separate lawsuit, his former best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield). Saverin gave Zuckerberg the initial funds to set up the site before finding himself out in the cold later on, and Garfield's subtle portrayal makes him the film's most empathetic character. "I was your only friend," he says to Zuckerberg, but Eisenberg doesn't allow his character's impassive face to slip and reveal real, human emotions. It's a truly unsettling and brilliantly modulated performance, a sly mixture of arrogance, contempt and quiet introspection. When he appears to drift off during a lawyer's questioning, the lawyer asks if he has his full attention, and Zuckerberg retorts magnificently. "You have part of my attention, you have the minimum amount" he coolly states, "The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing."
We know from The West Wing that Sorkin can write great dialogue, but this is the first time he has successfully translated the wit, intelligence and rat-a-tat rhythms of that show to the big screen. The film's actors are all perfectly fluent in Sorkinese, delivering their lines in aggressive, cutting bursts of energy, with Justin Timberlake in particular relishing his role. He brings his pop star magnetism to the part of Sean Parker, the founder of Napster, who acts as a charismatic svengali, breezing into the movie and seducing Zuckerberg with his stories of glamour, wealth and fame. It's a devilishly enjoyable performance from the musician, and one that reminded me of Fight Club's Tyler Durden, although there is little evidence elsewhere of the flash that Fincher brought to that film. His direction is fantastically detailed but marvellously understated. Shooting in a muted palette, he allows nothing to distract from the the performances and the storytelling, and he establishes a wonderful sense of thrusting forward momentum, aided considerably by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' fine score.
The Social Network is such a smooth model of storytelling that the occasional clumsy scene – like the manner in which the Winklevi discover that Facebook has made it to England – stands out jarringly. Likewise, the film is so focused on the petty male squabbling at its core that some of the female characters are given short shrift, most notably Eduardo's girlfriend Christy (Brenda Song) whose development into a crazy bitch comes out of nowhere. It's easy to disregard those flaws, however, as they mean little in the overall scheme of things. The Social Network is one of the most purely entertaining and stimulating movies of the year, using the creation of a website to deal with the oldest themes in the book: friendship, betrayal, ambition, greed and regret. In its structure, the film most obviously apes Citizen Kane, with its central character achieving unimaginable wealth and influence, but at the cost of pushing those closest to him away. The final shot clarifies the facts of the story while leaving us guessing about the true nature of Mark Zuckerberg, who remains a cold-blooded enigma, but who may yet elicit audience sympathy as he sits at his laptop, staring at his 'Rosebud.' Is he an asshole? You decide.
