The Social Network 2010

"The Winklevi are not suing me for intellectual property theft. They are suing me because for the first time in their lives things didn't work out the way it was supposed to for them." -Mark Zuckerberg

"I'm 6'5" 220 and there are two of me."- Cameron Winklevoss

"Do I have your full attention?" -opposing lawyer
" I am under oath so I am legally obligated to say "No"." -Mark Zuckerberg

"Have you ever seen me wear a scarf?"-Christy
"No, so this will be your first." -Eduardo Savarin

"It was more of a glottal stop."-Mark Zuckerberg

I appreciate Aaron Sorkin.  He makes scripts that snap. They are memorable, they are witty, and leave no doubt as to the intentions of our characters and their driving motivations. (I'm also pretty certain that I can identify an Aaron Sorkin script within the first 10 minutes. His quirks are usually quite apparent.) I wish more movies writers/directors/producers embraced this more spartan view of their work and the necessity of words. I'm looking at you Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay.

Unfortunately in this case, while I am a fan of Mr. Sorkin, he may have gone too far and scraped away too much nuance and character fat to make the movie beyond just good. This is my second viewing of The Social Network.  The first was in the Theaters in 2011. It has aged well, due to its crispness. However, this time I got slightly less impact out of the characters than I did the first viewing. (This is to be expected, but in my case it was beyond normal.) Now, I notice how the crisp lines leave little for the actors to establish their quirks and create depth and nuance. There is some hesitation in my critique given that actually all of the events are technically told from the future by a biased party. And we are often hazy as to who's perspective is on camera.  We as humans tend to be bad at recognizing subtlety, thus we would remember and present versions of events in a Sorkin-esque way. When I remember my own stories, my lines and my friend's lines are always crisp and each of our intentions are clear. The reality is both far less and far more interesting. -The further back the story the better I was..hahaha

Very nice work, but very slightly beyond my palate.

Oh and I would very much be interested to see someone do a compare and contrast paper between The Social Network and Rashomon.

On a scale of Billions to "Trillions are the new sexy.", I give The Social Network 3.7 stars out of 5.