Christopher Nolan vs. David Fincher

I am not among the first thousand people to write about “The Social Network,” but to be fair, there is a lot to discuss in that.  I’ve been a fan of David Fincher since “Fight Club” and, rewatching this one for the third time, I’m struck by how distinct his style is: high contrast cinematography, all very dark, and a pace—and editing—that is, as far as I can tell, without parallel among modern auteurs.  I used to get into a nerd debate with a friend over who was the better new director: Christopher Nolan or David Fincher, “new” in this usage referring to them being, basically, younger than Martin Scorsese—and I will always vote for David Fincher. 

Why?  Well, Nolan got a great performance out of Heath Ledger.  He got good performances out of Marion Cotillard and Gary Oldman, actor who are good in everything.  Fincher, however, has pushed—maybe—a little harder.  Brad Pitt in “Fight Club” does something you don’t see in any other Brad Pitt movie; true, Edward Norton and Helena Boham-Carter play their respective types, but Norton and Bonham-Carter remain incredibly versatile actors.  In “Seven” (or “Se7en,” which is stupid) Brad Pitt gave another great performance, Morgan Freeman put in twice the effort he regularly put into movies after 1995, and Kevin Spacey—showing up thirty minutes (or so) before the credits--is perfect.  “Zodiac” has great turns by Robert Downey, Jr., Mark Ruffalo, and—although I can never tell how much Jake Gyllenhaal is trying—a decent Jake Gyllenhaal performance. 

David Fincher

Jessie Eisenberg in “The Social Network” is, however, perhaps the most interesting.  I’d like to think that by now, after “12 Monkeys” and “Fight Club” etc. that we can all agree Brad Pitt is more than just a pretty boy actor.  Heath Ledger is widely agreed, post-mortem, to be one of the greatest actors of his generation—and his is probably the most interesting, or at least most popular, performance in a Christopher Nolan movie.  Jessie Eisenberg, however, branches out, percentage-wise, far more than Pitt, Ledger, or whoever else…

Jesse Eisenberg in a hoodie of some sort

The other day I saw a news-item about a new Noah Baumbach movie that said that Eisenberg would be replacing James Franko in a role where he would be teaching Ben Stiller’s character to “loosen up,” as the movies so often phrase it.  Now, James Franco, on the internet, gets a lot of crap for being pretentious or narcissistic or whatever.  Eisenberg, however—just judging by “Adventureland,” “The Squid and the Whale,” and “The Social Network”—well, Eisenberg is the pleasant, likeable sort in the first two; he’s in a similar mode in “Zombieland.”  He’s likeable.  He’s likeable because he doesn’t exude likeability; he’s counter-intuitively charming in the sense that he has charisma but lacks the bland affability you see in most charming people.

In “The Social Network” he strikes a different tone.  Maybe that wouldn’t be hard—as a director, or as an actor.  As a director, you can shoot it differently: the writer can write it differently.  You can say, “glower more.  Frown more.  Don’t blink so much.”  The actor can voluntarily do the same thing.  And the writer—despite his supposed lack of power in Hollywood—can write it (with the Director or Studio’s okay) in a way that will force the star to frown more, glower more, and skip blinking altogether. Now, Eisenberg’s character isn’t as dazzling as Heath Ledger’s Joker or as intoxicating as Tyler Durden, but he manages to be at times sympathetic, understandable, chilling, pathetic, and whatever the adjective-form-descriptor of “sad,-misunderstood-puppy” is.  Eisenberg is fantastic at “sad,-misundertsood-puppy”; but combined with the other airs he takes on, his Mark Zuckerberg forms a much deeper and more coherent character than is perhaps found in the rest of either Nolan or Fincher’s films.

Andrew Garfield, in this film, is good, but he’s given less to do.  The movie is on his side, so all he can do is be agreeable, nice, and torture chickens off-screen.  He’s good, here, better than his good performance in Terry Gilliam’s last film, the fantastic “Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.”  Justin Timberlake, in an effort to bring both Sexy (and Napster) back, is surprisingly good as Napster-founder Sean Parker.  I must say, I do miss Napster, if only because I could work it better than I could ever figure out Limewire or Kazaa, back in the day.

 Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan no doubt makes fantastic blockbusters, and he injects a good deal more humanity and intelligence into them than you normally find in that type.  David Fincher, however, seems to have more creative freedom—obviously because he’s not busy making films as expensive as the Batman series has been.  Nolan has talent, but his pacing always bugs me: every scene seems to be building up toward another scene, like a Rube Goldberg contraption where each bit has "just wait for the next one!" written on it in Sharpie.  Take, for example, the way things seem to constantly be moving in his Batman films: watch the way one scene ends, the way a character finishes their sentence, the accompanying music, and how quickly the scene cuts to the next scene.  There’s intensity there, but less craft than in a Fincher film.  His best films (“Fight Club” and “Social Network” for the sake of conversation) have fantastic soundtracks by the Dust Brothers and Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross (respectively) but—perhaps because of the techno/ambient/chamber sound of those musicians—each scene is allowed to hang for a second longer.  “The Social Network” had a notoriously long screenplay; Fincher solved the problem by having his actors speak faster than normal for movies, and yet the film never feels rushed.

I suppose, as this drones on, that the question of "who's better" is irrelevant.   "Inception" is a better film than "Panic Room," but "Fight Club" is a better film than "Insomnia."  It's a question that is not even academic: the sort of conversation or argument you might have while waiting in line at Chipotle.  They have their strengths and weaknesses.  One doesn't need to compare Michael Bay to Roland Emmerich, or Jackson Pollock to Willem de Kooning, for that matter.  They're both good (more Pollock/de Kooning than Bay/Emmerich) and the question with which I have wasted the last ten minutes of your life dissecting is, in the end, less than necessary.  Unless you get into a Sophie's Choice sort of situation, this will not matter, but if you do: choose David Fincher, unless Martin Scorsese is a third party in the mix, in which case, choose Martin Scorsese.  He may be old, but come on, he's Martin Scorsese.