Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

I didn’t have a lot of high expectations going into this movie. Even with its rave reviews and Oscar nominations, how, I asked, could a movie about programmers in a dorm room be interesting above and beyond what we’ve already taken as standard for a story like this?

While The Social Network did not necessarily reach me in a deeply emotional way, I was very impressed at its structure. This is a movie that jumps between multiple time lines and tells a pretty hard to visualize story (that of launching a website) in a very clear way.

The movie does try to reach for emotional conflict and motivation, but for me, the execution did not all-the-way succeed. I think the lack of a true movie hero contributes to this effect. The movie’s Mark Zuckerberg is not a sympathetic root-for underdog. (Although Jesse Eisenberg convincingly plays him as just a little bit off, a person for whom normal social conventions are not entirely within reach.) The people who face him as challengers to and obstacles of his genius are not classic villains. I just could not get committed into the emotional undertones of inadequacy and friendship that permeate this movie.

I much better liked the business aspect of it. How to create. How to grow. Who to listen to. How to make business decisions when they are also personal decisions.

Because that’s the thing with geekdom isn’t it? Tech isn’t tech unless it is used by people. And The Social Network points out that while the creation of the ultimate online social experience is about giving everyone a way to get together, it also is about exclusion as well.

If I Picked the Oscars 2011 (in order of my vote)

Best Picture:

• True Grit
• Black Swan
• Toy Story 3
• Inception
• Winter’s Bone
• The Social Network
• 127 Hours
• The Fighter
• The King’s Speech
• The Kids Are All Right

Best Director:

• Joel Coen and Ethan Coen (True Grit)
• Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan)
• David Fincher (The Social Network)
• David O. Russell (The Fighter)
• Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech)

Best Actor

• Jeff Bridges (True Grit)
• James Franco (127 Hours)
• Colin Firth (The King’s Speech)
• Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network)
• Javier Bardem (Biutiful) have not seen

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