4/5/24
Newsletter #579
The Crack of Dawn
I saw The Social Network (2010) when it was released and was so repelled by the character of Mark Zuckerberg that I held it against Jesse Eisenberg and never liked him. Anyway, I just rewatched the film and I was wrong about, Jesse Eisenberg is really good. But I’m now even more disgusted with the character, the person, the everything that is Mark Zuckerberg, and his creepy intentions for Facebook from its very initial idea.
I’m old. For a decade, the few times I’ve seen Rooney Mara, I thought, “Where do I know her from?” It’s The Social Network. She actually has the key role. The movie begins with her on a date with Mark at a bar. But right away the director, Mr. David Fincher, has made a decision to bury the dialogue into the background noise. And he does this many times. I hate it. Like I said, I’m old, give me a break and let me hear the dialogue, particularly if it’s by Aaron Sorkin. And it’s a terrific scene.
It's a smart script, as one would expect from Aaron Sorkin. So, on this date, which is the first scene in the movie, with Rooney Mara, who is cute and very good, I had to roll the whole scene back and watch it again, with the volume up full. I have a fucking 75” TV for fuck’s sake. I even ran it through my awesome stereo and that didn’t help. Fincher has intentionally mixed the dialogue to low and the background—known as walla—too high. On purpose. And he does it many times, often with excessively loud music. In any case, Rooney ultimately tells Mark Zuckerberg that she doesn’t want to go out with him, not because he’s a nerd, but because he’s an asshole. And he is.
Out of pure spite, he goes directly to his computer and posts her name, Erica Albrecht (some of my memory works) on his blog, as well as a bunch of nasty comments about her bra size and her lack of intelligence. This ugly line of thinking leads Zuckerberg, once again motivated by nothing but creepy spite, to set up a website that compares the looks of the girls from nearby schools, which he calls Facemash. Ultimately, Facemash becomes Facebook, Zuckerberg screws everyone around him, then the litigation begins.
Aaron Sorkin uses the litigation as the glue, which works as a solid dramatic structure. All of the lead characters and their lawyers are at a deposition. Now, who did Mark screw, and what’s the settlement?
Rooney Mara has another good scene. Near the end Mark sees her in a bar with friends and asks if he can see her alone and she says no. She repeats what he did to her, ridiculing her by name, and how it affected her, and hurt her, and no she won’t see him alone. She’s saying you betrayed me, exposed me, opened me up for ridicule and pain, and you did it maliciously, and there’s nothing about you that I like. And I believe it implies, that is what Mark Zuckerberg’s invention called Facebook does for the world; it was meant to bring ridicule and unwanted exposure, and it does.
The movie was made in 2010, which is already 14 years ago, and it says at the end of the movie that Facebook has a half billion users. I just checked. It now has 2.9 billion users.
Be that as it may, Jesse Eisenberg, to whom I took an unfair disliking for giving a believable performance of an unlikeable prick, just wrote and directed a film called When You Finish Saving the World (2023), that’s worth a look. I don’t think it knows where it’s going or why, but it felt contemporary and made me chuckle a few times. Mr. Eisenberg was trying to capture the moment he’s actually living in, and I think he did that. I love Julianne Moore, but as the lead kid’s mother she’s old enough to be his grandmother (and she’s three years younger than me). Anyway, I had no idea where the story was going, and I don’t think Jesse Eisenberg did, either, but I didn’t mind riding along.
The spring is struggling to arrive. But arrive it will.
I always tend to find Eisenberg roles similar in the characters he chooses, and usually unlikeable!
Agree with your comments about both 'bergs.
Eisen_ is in a number of movies I've enjoyed.
From the intentionally-banal 'American Ultra',
to 'now You see me' , which I laughed at more than I laughed with. Just MHO.