Journal Entry #2502022: I Woke Up This Morning on a Hot, Summer Day in Queens and I Fiddled

In this post, I dabble in a bit of online journaling. Take a peek at the day in the life of a bloke in New York City on a hot Summer day.

The author dons a blue surgical mask
on a hot Summer's day.

I woke up this morning early. I fiddled a bit, then ran out of the house to catch the bus. And then I realized I was waiting at the wrong bus stop. I eventually made it to my eye doctor’s appointment — albeit a little late. Side note: I realized that I am still definitely afraid of the eye puff machine, even though the eye doctor told me they don't use the puff anymore. That doesn't stop me from mightily squinting and tossing my chin. “There’s no puff, Mr. Roselli,” the doctor said, “You can relax.” I love when medical doctors are so rational with their patients; it's comforting. At the end of the visit, he was like, you're a good patient — as if he was attempting to reassure me. Uh <laugh> but I was okay. I ate some Brazilian comfort food, hopped on an N train, and went to @moma. Tourists queue up to take pictures with Andy Warhol’s soup cans. Watching museum goers look at art is voyeuristic. A boy calls Jackson Pollock’s drip painting “cool,” and a family was having fun finding all the animals in Rousseau’s “The Dream.” I noticed @momafilm was screening the vampire flick Let the Right One In. One unique element of movies is how they create settings. This movie takes place in a gray, snowed-in Norwegian suburb. I highly recommend the movie. Amazing. I had seen it in 2008, but it's always splendid to see a good movie on the big screen.

On Astoria Boulevard in Queens, there is a mural of a 7 subway train car; The author notes, "As I waited for my take-out, I snapped a picture of the fish in the aquarium. Life is good."

PDF Copy for Printing

Review of Frederick Wiseman's "High School" (1969) and Jean-François Caissy's La Marche à Suivre (2014)

I am a teacher, so I am familiar with the strained relationship students sometimes have with authority. And most teachers - especially the best ones - are in tune with this tension between youth and adult, between power, and submission, obedience, and freedom. However, taking a psychological view, High School is also an exciting time where teenagers are becoming self-reflective, and the adults in the room have a front row seat to their pupils' on-going development. I use the word becoming on purpose. Adolescence is a messy progress.

La Marche à Suivre (2014)

High School (1969)

Lorelei from Superman III (1983) Reads Kant's Critque of Pure Reason

Superman III (1983)

You can read the above clip from Superman III as a dumb blonde joke writ large or as an insightful riff on philosophy. I am guessing it is the former rather than the latter. 

Playing the supposed ditzy lover of the film's villain, Lorelei reveals she is a fan of Immanuel Kant's transcendental philosophy - the eighteenth-century European thinker's idea that he could bring together two schools of thought - empiricism and rationalism. At least that's the general idea of the book Lorelei's caught reading — The Critique of Pure Reason.

Lorelei: How can he say that pure categories have no objective meaning in transcendental logic? What about synthetic unity? 

It looks like Lorelei has stumbled upon the truth of transcendental idealism — that things in themselves cannot really be known in of themselves. Or did she?

Movie Review: A Taste of Honey (1961)

Jo (Rita Tushingham) in A Taste of Honey (1961)

I've always been a sucker for kitchen sink drama. Maybe I was first smitten by Streetcar Named Desire, the Louisiana-Southern version of the genre — and I have always had a penchant for working-class stories.
Fantastic! It's both queer and interracial!
Director Tony Richardson's A Taste for Honey (1961) is a fantastic! addition to the tradition — it boasts both a gay character (Oh My!) and interracial romance (Oh Gee!). And I am pretty sure the Smith's song "This Night Has Opened My Eyes" shares an aesthetic family resemblance. The plot offers nothing new in terms of what we're used to seeing on the big screen, and maybe I have seen enough movies from the 1960s to think that A Taste For Honey does not capture my attention because of its capacity to take on controversial topics. Charles Silver likened the protagonist Jo to Antoine Doinel from Truffaut's auteurist masterpiece. And while I did see the film first in Silver's Auteurist History of Film exhibition at MoMA (full disclosure), I tend to agree with this assessment. Tony Richardson's adaptation of Shelagh Delaney's play takes full advantage of Jo's (Rita Tushingham) soulful eyes beaten down by the soft ideology of work (which is why I say the song resembles the Smith's song). Could she have been a poet? The movie ends on an ambiguous note. Jo, replete with child, welcomes in her ousted mother Helen (Dora Bryan) inadvertently saying goodbye to Geoffrey (Murray Melvin), the titular gay boy. The ending shot of the little boy giving Jo the sparkler is touching, and I wondered at the movie's close if Geoffrey would return to be a gay uncle or if Jimmy (Paul Danquah) would ever show up again.

Mother Daughter Sister Lover

The movie leaves us with the question of Helen and Jo's fate. The mother and daughter pair share a strained intimacy, and we're left to wonder what it would be like if Jo had been able to move on without her. In an earlier scene, Helen bathes in the tub and tells her daughter she is now a married woman (which we suspect is probably her sixteenth proposal). The scene shows the relationship between the two women, while comfortable standing in the bathroom while her mother bathes (a form of intimacy), it is apparent that Helen will never be able to give the maternal care that Jo deserves. And when Jo becomes pregnant, and her mother has run off to live with her new husband Peter (a drunk), Jo cobbles together her own version of family with Geoffrey and fantasizes about her "dark prince" Jimmy. I liked the movie's careful way of showing us Jo with Jimmy, her first love, then Jo rebuffed by Helen, and then Jo thinking that she might be able to build something authentic with Geoffrey. It becomes clear that the Jo and Geoffrey story was a substitute for something else. For Jo, it was a desire to be cared for, and maybe for Geoffrey, it was a need to be accepted. He was kicked out of his own apartment for sleeping with a man (was it rent controlled?) and when he moves in with Jo, he quickly takes on the role of the mother figure, even obtaining a fake baby to help Jo learn the rudimentary skills of motherhood. It's not surprising Jo throws the baby to the ground, and while we can probably guess the source of Jo's anger, we also realize (and maybe she does too) that motherhood will be foisted upon her no matter if she wants it or not and this pattern has had a long history, not only with her mother but a powerful narrative that tells women that motherhood is natural and should be accepted. Helen is loathe to tell Jo of her biological father, except that they share the same eyes, and he was a simple man. This codes for Jo that her father was a half-wit, and her mother, even though she may have loved her father for an afternoon, the relationship did not sustain a family.

End of Innocence

The movie is bookended with images of childhood innocence, the first with Jo playing sport on the school playground, and the soundtrack of children singing "The big ship sails on the alley, alley, oh!" The movie ends with the same song, and we are lighted upon Jo's face one last time. Jo throughout the movie vacillates between child and scared adult. Rita Tushingham plays Jo with zest and innocence — for example: in an earlier scene where she pantomimes her teacher, and remarkably scared and curious when she feels her baby kick inside of her belly (and remember, this movie was made long before Ellen Page and Jennifer Garner had their moment in Juno). If Charles Silver is right, we can compare the two endings. In the Truffaut film, Antoine is captured in a still shot on the beach which I still think is the most affective ending in cinematic history. We know Antoine's story because Truffaut regales us with many more sequels to follow. For Jo, we are left to imagine her story. And this I think is satisfactory.

PDF Copy for Printing

IMDb link: A Taste of Honey

Dir: Tony Richardson

1961

Greig's Best Movies of 2013

To add to the glut of "best of" 2013 lists compiled this time of year, here's my authoritative round-up (not!) of the best movies. In my humble opinion.

1.) Blue Jasmine
Cate Blanchett is tragically diaphanous in Woody Allen's newest cinematic addition.

2.) The Bling Ring
Sofia Copola shows us the beauty of the Los Angeles hills and a vicarious glimpse into the celebrity rich through the lens of the children who rob them.

3.) Mud
You may remember Tye Sheridan in The Tree of Life. He gets his chance to shine in this coming of age tale set in Louisiana.

4.) Lore
A Nazi family try to escape capture at the end of World War II in this drama directed by Cate Shortland.

5.) West of Memphis
Damien Echols, one of the falsely accused "West Memphis Three," gets his chance to tell his story in this revealing documentary directed by Amy Berg.

6.) Gravity
I spent more time looking at the spiraling Earth than the actors, but this movie is cosmic and terrifying.

7.) Her
Spike Jonze is one of my favorite directors. Her adds to my admiration. I've been waiting for a movie about computer love for a long time. It's finally here.

8.) The Spectacular Now
This understated movie ends differently than the novel it's based on, but I thought the two young actors were superb in their vulnerability.

9.) Stand Clear of the Closing Doors
Sam Fleischner allows us to follow a young autistic boy who runs away from his home in Far Rockaway to travel the New York City subway alone right before Hurricane Sandy crashes on shore.

10.) Prisoners

Two girls go missing and the result is an irrational rupture of both desperation to find the truth (Jake Gyllenhaal's performance of a local detective) and insane vigilante justice (Hugh Jackman, who plays the father of one of the missing girls).

PDF Copy for Printing

On Drinking Prosecco And Watching Malcolm (And What Came Of It)

I drank a bottle of Prosecco in the late afternoon. The light had just begun to disintegrate. On my computer lay a MPEG of Malcolm X, a movie I had intended to watch. To my chagrin, I had never watched it and vowed to see it through during a time of inactivity. It is my goal to immerse myself in the cinema. It's been a recent habit of mine to sit in a cinema as often as I can gather the strength to take the D train to Midtown. Sunset Park is lackluster in cinema options. Bay Ridge only plays the shallow greats. Cobble Hill has a decent cinema but I don't take the F train. It's easier to ride into Manhattan, with its jaundiced eyes, and beleaguered denizens. Humanity looks browbeaten on the subway. I sort of feel shameful taking the D train to see a movie during rush hour. Shouldn't I feel just as browbeaten, just as defeated after a long day of work? That's a silly rhetorical question. Maybe these people, these sour brow beaten folks have more money in their pockets than me. They have mouths to feed. Rent to pay. I've paid my rent. I am going to see a movie. I wish they could come with me and rejoice in the pleasures of the visual screen. "It's a screed," I preach. I say. To them. To the woman with the holes in her hosiery, to the overtly masculine boy who keeps picking at his knickers. To the guy, a prince, so fairly laden, he only knows how to ask for something, never

to empathize. It's a guilty pleasure. I don't know why I feel so guilty. Today. I counted them. I saw eighty-six movies at the same cinema. That's not counting the other movies at other cinemas. I feel like Susan Sontag. Or something. Malcolm X. They soaked in information; then they launched onto the world. I feel like I am still a chrysalis in its shell, damned, but I do not know why.

PDF Copy for Printing

Friedrich Nietzsche on the Abyss

"Beyond Good and Evil", Aphorism 146 (1886).

Decided to rewatch Abyss, the 1989 sci-fi water drama based on a Michael Crichton novel of the same name, and was pleasantly surprised to see it begins with an apt quote from Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. I don't remember that tidbit when I saw it over twenty years ago. Despite the usual Hollywood spectacle hijinks one expects from studio blockbusters, I have always remembered this movie as not just rather impressive with the special effects (for its time) but also a visually poetic film and one of the better close-encounter-with-the-third-kind kind of movie (of course not to beat Close Encounters of the Third Kind).

PDF Copy for Printing

Video Repost: "Blah Blah Blah" Supercut by Alex Brown

Creator: Alex Brown
"Blah Blah Blah" Supercut

A supercut of movie Blahs. (...and 1 from TV)
Hollywood scriptwriting at it's best. Try to guess all the movies.
All the clips used in this video fall under fair use for parody.

Here is my list as they occur in the supercut. 

Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Al Pacino in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) 
Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers (2005)
Cruel Intentions (1999)
Charlize Theron in Monster (1993)
Ed Harris in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
Richard Dreyfus in Tin Men (1987)
8 Mile (2002)
Cars (2006)
Dinner for Schmucks (2010)
Iron Giant (1999) 
Chev Chelios in Crank (2006)
Vanessa Redgrave in Deep Impact (1998)
A Jon Favreau movie that I cannot identify.
Magnolia (1999)
A girl with princess hat and wand saying blah blah blah (Maybe it's Mara Wilson?)
Bruce Willis in Die Hard (1988
Inside Man (2006)
Unknown movie (Can you help me to identify it?)
Finding Nemo (2003)
A John Cusack movie that I cannot identify.
When Harry Met Sally (1989)
True Lies (1994)
Christopher Walken in Balls of Fury (2007) 
An episode from the First Season of Star Trek on television
Inception (2010)

Movie Review: Love Story

A capsule review on fragility and loss in Love Story (1970) with a special nod to love in libraries.

Ryan O'Neil and Allie McGraw in Arther Hiller's Love Story (1970) 

Yes, I must say, love that begins in a library is a trope we find in Music Man or in the fantasy of bookish nerds, so we naturally equate it with Cinderella syndrome — the woman patiently waiting for her man to appear from behind the stacks. In the 1970 Arthur Hiller film, Love Story, Allie McGraw and Ryan O’Neil butt heads at a library circulation desk; hardly the madame librarian named Marianne, or some ethereal intellectual fantasy. Ryan O’Neil, a Harvard jock, deemed “preppie” by his inimical counterpart, the black-haired brilliant musician sprung from humble Bostonian roots. The two make for a nice compare and contrast (as far as romances go). In the scene, shot in the interior of the library at Radcliffe, O’Neil attempts to check out The Waning of the Middle Ages. “Do you have your own library?” she asks, goading him, revealing the difference (at least to the viewer) between the sexes at ivy league American schools. Harvard is gendered as male: more books, more knowledge, more opportunity. Why should a man march into a woman’s space demanding their knowledge when he has his own, and more? The two argue. She wants to play. He just wants a book. The heart and spunk of the intellectual romantic comedy is born. The tropes are obvious. And we see the two soon-to-be-lovers as distinct yet compatible. The jock likes the girl’s toughness and rebellious approach. She likes his body, as she playfully says, and perhaps notices he is not put-off by her intellectual affronts. The psychology is laid out in pieces in the movie. He comes from privileged New England wealth but disdains his background. She has pulled herself up by her bootstraps and wears her intellectual and musical acumen like a badge. 

Allie McGraw projects beauty in this movie and the ability to engage in playful rapporté — not quite a femme fatale, however, since beneath her brilliance lies a fragility that marks the film and gestures towards its intrinsic theme, namely the fragile nature of relationships thwarted by circumstances often beyond our control. Despite their outward differences, the two come together because of a shared sameness. The movie takes turn portraying Ryan O’Neil’s character as vulnerable, for example when his father shows up unexpectedly at a Harvard hockey match and Allie McGraw’s character is there to support him, to hold him up. On the way to visit his parents, Ryan O’Neil eases her apprehensions about the visit. Of course, the movie is set up to be about the oscillation between loneliness and fragility. The opening shot, if I recall, is the former Harvard jock looking out onto an empty ice skating rink in Central Park. We as viewers do not know the significance of this scene until much later when we learn that our intractable, confident heroine has contracted leukemia. Preppie skates the rink in solitude while she looks on from the bleachers, both aware of the fragility of their soon to be broken apart bond. The editors chose to superimpose Allie McGraw’s image over that of Ryan O’Neil as he skates. For me, this was unnecessary for I think it dismisses the impact of the loss to come. We are reminded of the playful moments of their relationship earlier in the film: for example when both make snow angels and build a snow fort at Harvard. Director Arthur Hiller mentions in a documentary on the film, that this scene was serendipitous in that there was a record snowfall that day, but he decided to film anyway. Since he had made it clear he wanted Allie McGraw and Ryan O’Neil to portray what lovers do when they are new in love, he just had them play naturally in the snow. Here we see the two without words, without intellectual sparring, or agonizing over class difference. It is in other scenes that we see the intellectual difference between the two. She is graceful and brilliant in music and he is stalwart in achieving success cut off from the breast milk of his rich upbringing. The movie would be mediocre if we knew from the outset that our heroine will die. We only know this later; and, we can then feel for their loss. We are meant to project our own emotions and our own memories of love and love lost onto our formal lovers on screen. Perhaps this is why the movie was so popular, nominated for seven academy awards — not to forget the original score that is transcendent in its tonal representation of love and loss. I don’t think Love Story is a great film, but I do feel it would have been a lesser film if not for the work of our two stars who truly embody on screen the give and take of living with one another, the give and take, ease and struggle, life and loss, separation and link of conversation and togetherness.

PDF Copy for Printing

Quote from Auntie Mame: "Life's a Banquet"

Rosalind Russel as Auntie Mame (1958)

Life is a banquet and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death. ~Auntie Mame 

What is so great about Auntie Mame's advice to her young nephew is not so much the hedonism that it espouses, but the grim observation that most of would not know pleasure even if it hit us smack dab in the face.

PDF Copy for Printing

When Seeing the Devil is Not a Matter of Good Versus Evil

I Saw the Devil
(2010) Directed by Jee-woon Kim
Starring Byung-hun Lee, Min-sik Choi and Gook-hwan Jeon

    It was an incongruous pairing for me this weekend: Jim Hensen's muppets and a Korean film depicting gory revenge. After previewing Hensen's charming eight minute exploration on resisting time (at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria), my buddy Airplane and I took in the last film showing offered in the museum's theater. I Saw The Devil is most certainly not a sight for Miss Piggy. Or for Kermit.
    If one takes Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment to the next level it might be close to this movie. At the outset I knew it would be bloody and disturbing. The first few minutes is a graphic abduction and beheading of the protagonist's fiancé.
    Protagonist may be too strong of a word. The film calls into question the concept of villain and hero. The narrative runs revenge style. Man kills man's love so man seeks out to destroy man. The movie takes us on this horrific journey but twists it to the extent that at the end we are not sure who is good or who is bad.
    Neither apologetic nor dogmatic, director Jee-woon Kim's impeccably filmed story of sadism and torture is not a movie for the faint of heart. Hoping to rest on a human ending, this tale ends with questions disturbingly left unanswered about man's inhumanity to man.
    Revenge is bad is the film's mantra. The typical good versus evil movie usually ends with evil overturned by  the good. Not this movie. [spoiler alert] While evil does get vanquished by the plot's end, so does good.
    It seems to me after a couple of hours of maiming, blood lust, and chopped up corpses, all we are left with is the question why?
    The gist seems to be a Chinatown addendum where the path down the rabbit hole leads to only one place: a seizing, inescapable void.

PDF Copy for Printing

C-

Image credit: filmdeviant

Book Review - Pursuits of Happiness: A Short Response

Stanley Cavell in his book Pursuits of Happiness writes about remarriage comedies in movies made after the advent of talkies (1934-1949). Cavell's list is as follows: The Lady Eve (1941), It Happened One Night (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Adam’s Rib (1949), and The Awful Truth (1937).

Movie Review: "Desert of Forbidden Art" (2010)

At Cinema Village in Manhattan, 
Desert of Forbidden Art (2010) 
is screening: 
      The documentary, filmed on location in Karapalpakistan (in Uzbekistan) a formerly held area of the Soviet Union, unveils the mystery behind why in Nukus, an otherwise barren town in the desert, is home to thousands of pieces of Soviet Avant-Garde art. 
The answer lies in the life of artist Igor Savitsky. 
      Igor Savitsky was born from aristocratic Bolshevik roots; he became a worker to convince the new Soviet government that he had shed his aristocratic past. Desirous of the artist's life, he got a job drawing desert landscapes. He tried to become an artist but failed. Dispirited he moved to the desert city of Nukus. Unable to make it as an artist, Savitsky conjures up an idea to start a museum in the desert of Karapalpakistan to save revolutionary art from the censoring eyes of Soviet control. Artists who escape the gulag, or who come out of the gulag scarred, sought refuge in the desert to continue their work in secret. 
Savitsky Created a Secret Museum of Art in the Desert
      Savitsky is the collector who saves their pieces in his museum. Using state money, fooling officials about the content of the art, Savitsky was able to save pieces of art that spoke of the torture of the gulags and a pointing finger at the state-approved art that depicted the Soviet regime as growing and prosperous. The film is visually stunning. The filmmakers carefully construct the story about one man's fight against fascism but the film is also a document of the works themselves. The best part was the art itself, stunningly recaptured on film, the colors used by the artists is far from daubery. When I saw the film last weekend the film makes were there to speak about the movie. They spoke about the remote village of Nukus. It seems Uzbekistan does not care about the preservation of its Avant-Garde art. 
The Future of the Museum's Avant-Garde Art Collection
      The museum does not want to sell its collection, nor does the state government seem interested in persevering the art. In fact, as of this writing, the pieces are not displayed and seem to be destined for the trash heap if people do not stand up against the annihilation of art that Stavistky fought so hard to prevent. The documentary is timely because it speaks about a past censorship but seems to also be a call to action that art matters. 

Check out the trailer:
Desert of Forbidden Art

Directors: 

Tchavdar Georgiev, Amanda Pope

Writers: 

Amanda Pope, Tchavdar Georgiev

Stars:

 Edward Asner, Sally Field, and Ben Kingsley

More info from imdb.com

PDF Copy for Printing

Notes on an Idea: Cavell On The Star

For the American philosopher Stanley Cavell (The World Viewed, Pursuits of Happiness, Contesting Tears) actors on the silver screen are embodied representations of themselves thrown up on the movie screen, for all us to gaze.

Emerson's Star that Stands the Gaze of Millions
The star, to use Emerson's phrase, "stand the gaze of millions." We gaze on Cary Grant, for example, because we recognize him as Cary Grant who happens to naturally represent the roles he plays in the film. We appreciate Cary Grant (and Irene Dunne, or Elizabeth Taylor, or George Clooney) in the movie because they naturally “are themselves.” It is as if we treat the stars as persons we would encounter in everyday life. If the star does not appear to be himself we call his performance inauthentic. We judge the actor in the movies as authentic portrayals of themselves rather than as a convincing actor performing a role (as in the theater).
Questions of Authenticity and Inauthenticity
For Cavell, this propensity to view the film as authentic or inauthentic is characteristic of modern art. Would we ever call a performance of Chopin inauthentic? If we did we would be addressing our indictment to the performer and not to the piece itself. Art becomes treatable in the same way we treat persons. Are you authentic to the role you play? If not, you are not fit to stand the gaze of millions.
See my post on Cavell's other book about philosophy and movies: Pursuits of Happiness.

PDF Copy for Printing

The Awful Truth: Cary Grant and Irene Dunne

In this post, I write about Carey Grant and Irene Dunne's performance in the movie The Awful Truth.

With "the holiday in his eye," Stanley Cavell quotes Emerson on Carey Grant's performance in The Awful Truth: "he is fit to stand the gaze of millions."

Carey Grant in the Hollywood
film "The Awful Truth"

A high class married couple (Cary Grant and Irene Dunne) break up after a dispute on marital fidelity. After each tries their luck with a different lover the two come to terms with the "awful truth."

The comedy carries the basic plot structure of the romantic comedy. Boy meets Girl. Breakup. Hijinks. Come back together. Transformed. The End. But in certain movies from the 1930s, just after the advent of talkies, several films made during or just after the Great Depression dealt with a slight twist on the romantic comedy: the remarriage plot. The difference is both stars are already married and through a break-up and coming back together (after they realize they're "just the same, but different") both boy and girl learn to grow up together, as Cavell has pointed out in his deft review of 1930s comedies of remarriage, Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage.

The Awful Truth (1937) Directed by Leo McCarey. Written by Viña Delmar, Arthur Richman. Starring Cary Grant, Irene Dunne,  Ralph Bellamy, Cecil Cunnigham, Esther Dale.

PDF Copy for Printing

The 4 Train On Sunday

He told me this morning the four train is beast. Not beast as in animal. But beast as in best. I had taken it on Sunday after a visit to my Shrink. (I capitalize her name to make it proper). So I knew what he was talking about.

Movie Review: The Social Network

It should be no surprise that a film like the Social Network would eventually be made. Again. It is a story, as you will notice, if you see it, told over and over again. But, it is a story we like to hear, a story of greed and loss. The story of a man’s quick climb to power and wealth at the cost of losing friends and intimacy has found more than one expression in American cinema. Citizen Kane anyone? Or how about The Godfather? The snapshot images of a solitary Kane whispering "rosebud" is strangely resonant with that of Mark Zukerberg clicking a refresh button for hoped for human connection.

Citizen Kane, anyone?

The Social Network is Real Enough (With Some Artistic Liberties Taken)
Now, don't go worrying about whether the plot of the Social network is accurate or not. A simple Google search will reveal some of the plot is contrived, most notably the first scene that pretends to create the imbroglio that starts TheFacebook, namely, a break-up. The film is not too slow to remind us that its protagonist is not very likable. In fact, he is a jerk. Sexist, as well, and has a penchant for younger Asian girls, albeit an unnerving social awkwardness stereotypical of boys who write programming code. Aaron Sorkin's masterpiece is not really about Facebook, per se, but rather, an opportunity to elaborate on an American myth. Sure, we will believe -- or shall I say — can believe — Mark is painted to be the kind of guy who would sell out his friends. The lawyer at the end of the films acts as the audience when she tells Mark, “Myths need a devil.” Give us — the audience — enough details and we will gladly fill in the rest.

Craving the Limelight

The indictment of Mark Zuckerberg really isn't about Mark Zuckerberg so much as it is about a fascination with greed and power. Let's say it wasn't Mark Zuckerberg who created a website called facemash.com where Harvard girls were compared online to one another by Harvard boys (22,000 page views in one night). Let us say it wasn't Zuckerberg who may or may not have posted a blog post confessing his ex-girlfriend's true bra size. Let us say it was not Zuckerberg who may or may not have called the cops on Sean Parker who was with a minor at a party with illegal drugs (with Zuckerberg in the know, but in absentia). Let us say Mark had no idea that his best friend Eduardo Saverin would be pushed out of Facebook, rather mercilessly. 

It doesn't matter. Facebook is fascinating because a lanky, unlikeable Harvard nerd made it to the top. The key term is unlikable. When we realize it was not the more courteous Saverin who brought Facebook to fame -- nor was it the Winklevoss Brothers -- or anyone else at Harvard -- we realize that Mark Zuckerberg is kind of like a contemporary version of Charles Foster Kane. What is next? Will he fight for the common man? Well, sure. He already has. Who gave 100 million dollars (or some outrageous figure) to New Jersey public schools? Mark Zuckerberg! Zuckerberg's philanthropy -- disingenuous or not -- is a necessary element in the narrative. I cannot help but think of Charles Foster Kane's historical inspiration, William Randolph Hearst and his philanthropic effort to save New Yorkers from transit fare raises. But, we know from history, neither Mark Zuckerberg or William Randolph Hearst were experts in ethical do-gooding.

Facebook as an American Fantasy of the Garden of Eden

Being sued by the Winklevoss brothers, handsome rich rowing twins from Harvard for purportedly stealing their idea of a college social networking site, Mark is happy to make them angry because, as he says, they never had the experience before of someone else stopping them from doing what they want to do. The creation of Facebook on hand is like Charles Foster Kane's beginning glory: the icon of the wealthy philanthropist who used power to shame the good ole boys. But, there is also the dark side. He betrays his friend. His only friend, Eduardo Saverin. The film takes on an uncanny color of American myth. Watching the film, I felt like I was not watching a biopic of a guy who created a social networking site I use daily, and like very much, but the story of the American Garden of Eden -- the lust for power that make such stores as John Steinbeck's The Pearl and East of Eden. The American dream also spoiled and tainted by American lust. The American trope of succesful, yet disconnected, as also embodied by the current TV character Draper in "Madmen".

This is the dilemma of the film.

How can a man create a social networking site and make billions and billions of dollars and know nothing of human nature? Knowledge of human nature does not bring in the dough. Why? Because people do not care about human nature; we care about as a gestalt, but not as something to grasp. We care about status and tags because it feeds our self-image. We like the likes and the words on our walls because it makes us feel connected when were are not connected. I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg created facebook as a huge social experiment. He created it because he realized that the site could make him famous. Which it did. Or, to put it another way, it justified him. Because he deserved it. Right. 

Parable of Genius

Steve Jobs did not create Apple in his garage because he thought it would be fun to sell computers. He had an intuition that his computers would catch on with the masses. Zuckerberg is a genius in the same way. The film the Social Network is everything about Mark Zuckerberg and at the same time, it is nothing about Mark Zuckerberg. The film is about genius and the ability to see a pathway that no one else sees and go for it. But, the film, for me at least, is also about the price of ambition. A narrative truly American. And we a jury of peers can easily judge.

The Social Network

Director: 

David Fincher

Writers: 

Aaron Sorkin (screenplay), Ben Mezrich (book)

Mark Zuckerberg Jesse Eisenberg
Eduardo Andrew Garfield
Sean Justin Timberlake
Cameron/Tyler Armie Hammer
Divya Max Minghella
Erica Rooney Mara
Marilyn Rashida Jones

Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by David Fincher. Written by Aaron Sorkin, based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich. Running time: 120 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sexual content, drug and alcohol use and language).

PDF Copy for Printing

credits © Roger Ebert

Never Let Me Go

I was incredibly curious to see the adaptation of Ishiguro's exquisitely crafted novel Never Let Me Go ever since I had learned of Matthew Romanek's project.

fusedfilms

I must admit I am a huge fan of the novel and I agree with Time Magazine's claim that it is one of the best novels ever written. So, suffice it to say, I was afraid the film might ruin the book. The same ole book-into-movie fear everyone who is devoted to the source material fears. Don't destroy the book's integrity is the argument that runs through most fears that a film will discredit the book. I had heard that Ishiguro had pretty much handpicked the people who would produce the movie and said publicly he was pleased. Watching the trailer did not help convince me, however. The trailer depicts lots of tears, sentimental scores, and one of the main characters having a hissy-fit on a darkened street which made me suspect that Romanek's version would end up spoiling Ishiguro's understated masterpiece.

If you know nothing of the story's premise, I'm saying nothing to spoil the film by saying it is about a possible dystopic future where humans have discovered the ability to clone a subset of humans, which
they raise in schools across the country, educate them about the proper use of their bodies and health, but eventually use them to harvest their vital organs to defer the life spans of other, "real" humans. Death and disease are gone. At the expense of other "lives."

The premise is fodder for dozens of similar clone sci-fi films, but Ishiguro's novel brought to the table the basic question of what it means to be human and what it means when we consider a particular subset of human, un-human.