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Review: The Social Network

I remember friends coercing me into joining this Facebook website my first month of college. It was fall 2004, and the gimmick was that you could compare your interests (say, that The Godfather Part II was your favorite movie) with other users. But instead of spawning campus-wide movie nights, Facebook has grown into a grimly indispensable social sphere. Now, in a truly poetic turn of fate, Facebook users will be supplementing their profiles with The Social Network, a savvy modern thriller of wits and web-smarts rather than bank heists or shoot-outs.

When the project was announced, it was hard to foresee The Social Network as more than a marketing gizmo, a movie-of-the-week. But this prognosis underestimated the team of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher, as well as a top-notch cast led by Jesse Eisenberg. Sorkin is an answer to calls of why don't they write pictures like that anymore?, a holdover from the screwball days tossing off fast-paced, scalpel-sharp dialogue that illuminates the Harvard hauteur and incisiveness.

Mark Zuckerberg and his allies (soon to be enemies) inhabit the dingy dormitories and social aspirations of this Harvard community, and all are in their own way moved by the exclusivity and their entitlement of Bacchanalian fantasies like "finals clubs." Everything's vying not for connection but for betterment. Soon Zuckerberg, along with co-founder and CFO Eduardo Saverin, has launched his own website for the who's who: Harvard e-mail addresses only for the first run of Facebook. But as with successful business ventures, the end game is expansion; Facebook moves from college to college at dizzying speed, thanks to marketing guru and infamous Napster founder Sean Parker (played by eternal frat-boy Justin Timberlake).

Fincher's directoral hand is felt most in the eerie social atmosphere--the physical, non-web-based, one. The camera spies on cheerless finals club meetings, back-alley tete a tetes, and Parker's seductive Facebook parties with menace. Though the Harvard students manage to create a phenomenon and become billionaires, the film reminds us that they haven't escaped the non-stop collegian parties they longed to join. The only character who sees past the Facebook zeitgeist is Saverin, the co-founder who is ousted when Parker proves better at securing investment capital. The film doesn't try to take sides--business is business. But thanks to Andrew Garfield's earnest performance, it's hard not to feel for Saverin, betrayed by flesh-and-blood friends for online ones.

The film is not just social commentary. The ironies of Facebook friending are well-noted already. And claims of misogyny, though intentional, aren't entirely forgivable: a female second-year law associate comes across much more naively than she should. The Social Network works primarily as intrigue, showing how they got there and how tenuous the climb was. Eisenberg doesn't try to cull favor as Zuckerberg. He projects his superiority with a grimace, a permanent non-smile that hints at the insecurity beneath. What was it all for? Sorkin's supposition that it was a girl all along feels superfluous, yet it's great to see Zuckerberg longing for connection at the end. Even as the creator of the world's largest social network, he still wants to be included.

Where My Mind Went Listening to Mahler

The Boston Symphony Orchestra began its 2010-2011 season last week, and I saw two consecutive Thursday night concerts. Each featured a symphony by Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), a late Romantic composer infamous for his bombast. Now, if you've ever seen a Mahler symphony, let alone two back-to-back, you know what to expect. They are long. Over eighty minutes long. And even when one enjoys the music, one's mind tends to wander. Imagine this interior monologue (condensed, of course):

Movement I. I'm glad to see James Levine has recovered. What was the face he just made at the first violins? Did they screw up before they even started playing? Ahh, the opening fanfare; I forgot how simple Mahler is. Wait... simple? What am I saying? There are enough musicians on that stage to fill Rhode Island. I wonder how they all fit. Perhaps Symphony Hall removed the first few rows of chairs. These seats are terribly creaky. I wish that kid in front of me wouldn't bob his head to the beat. Is there a beat?

And it's over. What a swell symp... oh. That was just the first movement.

Movement II. This second movement is even darker than the first. Listen to those trills, the horn solos, the high violin passages. The program notes say "tempestuous." I bet it will rain when I leave. And is there an umbrella in my bag? I can't check now. The girl next to me is practically having an affair with my armrest. Why are there more empty seats for Mahler than there were for the first half? Did everyone else get the memo about how long this is?

In the last Mahler symphony I went to (No. 6), there was a cowbell. More cowbell, please? More cowbell?

Movement III. Thank goodness, the seventeenth movement. I'll get home before tomorrow. I should go into work early tomorrow, and take the afternoon off. Or maybe I will sleep in and show up at noon; my back's been a little stiff. Grown man behind me who is kneeing my chair repeatedly--you are not helping.

The ushers are rushing about in the corner. Hope that old man's all right. Is he breathing? If someone kicked it at Symphony Hall, would the concert stop? He could be wailing in agony, but you can't hear it over that music. Oh for the love of Mahler, man in Row L, get your middle-aged knee out of my seat cushion.

Movement IV. Groceries. I didn't buy groceries this week. Groceries require a whole movement of thought.

Movement V. The finale, at last! How come it took longer for the paramedics to arrive than the last movement? At least the old man's walking out. He's probably hungry. So am I, come to think of it. Maybe I shouldn't go to the gym before BSO concerts; too much of an appetite. Who was it that thought Mahler made pastries? Just down around the corner, come get your piece of Mahler's. I see the last page on the stands. Maybe it's a trick. Maybe there's an encore hidden behind their folders. Elaine Stritch thought Mahler was a baker, that's it!

Why is everyone rising? Is all this clapping written in? No: the symphony's over! We made it to the other side. You'll have to excuse me, fawning seat-neighbor. I have to get out of here presto. I've been thinking of nothing but Mahler for the past two hours.

For your reference: Elaine Stritch on Mahler.

My Short-Lived Spelling Bee History

S-E-S-Q-U-I-P-E-D-A-L-I-A-N. Sesquipedalian. Given to the use of long words. Also describing long words. Also describing itself. I wish it were a more accurate descriptor for myself.

I went to the Lyric Stage Company production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee two weeks ago, and it reignited my lost spelling-bee glory. Imagined glory, at least. To quote Marlon Brando, I coulda been a contender. (Of course, Blogger's spell check program dashes its red underline under "coulda" the moment the fingers type it. It's challenging me: "Are you really serious about spelling?")

One of the best aspects of Spelling Bee, the musical, was how it entered the audience. From the thrust stage and volunteer audience spellers to the trophies hanging around the exits, I felt almost immersed in the spelling competition. What would it have been like to compete in this rigmarole bee, where I might face a word like either phylactery or cow? (The judge's sentence: "Please spell cow.") What if I had gotten sesquipedalian? When I looked the word up online, I realized one of my e's should have been an i. It's always the vowels that trip me up. No trophy today.

Nor in third grade, the first year I remember our class participating in the spelling bee. You rarely hold on to the answers you get right when you're growing up, only your mistakes. Like when I had a test with the word "transparent." Choosing between pictures of a rather masculine-looking mother and a window, I settled on the woman. Maybe I was ahead of my time. But though confident in my spelling skills, acing  vocabulary quizzes every week except for the zucchini incident, I never made it to the top. A minor victory in my third grade class led to my shot at the school-wide bee. They held it in my kindergarten classroom. Perhaps that's why I choked on valorous. When I asked for the definition, I imagined a mountain valley, replete with lush gardens and running waters. Two l's later, the buzzer binged.

Applause for the Clowns

Review: A Little Night Music
Walter Kerr Theater, New York
September 11, 2010

When Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch were announced as the replacements for A Little Night Music, anticipation was high. Isn't it bliss, it seemed, to have two prime interpreters of Stephen Sondheim's work appearing in one of his shows again? Two thrilling moments happened when I returned to the Walter Kerr. The first was a collective hush as the clarinet began "Send in the Clowns." The second was a sigh of relief: Elaine Stritch remembered her lines.

From other reports, this isn't always the case. Time takes a toll on the memory, as Sondheim duly noted in his lyrics. "Remember?" an omnipresent vocal quintet sings as they fill the roles of narrators, servants, a theater troupe. And when Madame Armfeldt sings "Liaisons," recounting the extravagant affairs she held as a young courtesan with kings and dukes, she searches between verses for the next: "Where was I, where was I? Oh, yes."

Now 84, Stritch hasn't lost her spit-and-vinegar attitude, nor her razor-sharp timing. She finds unexpected laughs, with perhaps an ad-lib or two, but also poignancy. Her predecessor, Angela Lansbury, had a crisp, Old World haughtiness camouflaging the tenderness beneath. Stritch seems cognizant of death, that the parade has passed before her eyes. She started on Broadway as Ethel Merman's standby, and what a relief to see the old girl's still got it.

Bernadette Peters was last seen in two Merman revivals, Annie Get Your Gun and Gypsy. Though she impressed in an unlikely turn as Rose, Peters is a more natural fit as touring actress Desiree Armfeldt. Her Desiree stays an actress off-stage, even around her old flame, middle-aged lawyer Frederick Egerman (Alexander Hanson, still giving a relaxed but confident performance). But as the inevitability of losing her lover sets in, her facade melts, setting up a "Send in the Clowns" for the ages. Formerly sung by the vulpine Catherine Zeta-Jones, the song now centers on the deep regret of "losing my timing this late in my career."

My opinion of the reduced orchestra and the younger members of the cast has not changed. But the two new actresses's performances alleviate some of the production's Bergman-esque chill with an added dose of comedy, which infects the other players. In place of lavishness, we get truth: from an old woman who winks at death to an actress worried she's past her prime. Make way for the clowns--they're finally here.

The Show Mustn't Go On

Know how Amazon.com loves to sell you great deals you didn't know you wanted? The online seller (that maybe I visit once a day; maybe I have a problem) sent me an e-mail about Nip/Tuck: The Complete Series, daring me to turn them down. But you bought Mad Men, their theory goes, so of course you want Nip/Tuck too.

Oh, Amazon. The honest truth about my relationship with that frothy, overcooked soap opera is that there isn't one. Nip/Tuck and I parted ways seasons ago. Maybe the blame falls on me. I have expectations for TV shows. Like logic and character development. Clearly Nip/Tuck never aspired to the dramatic/nostalgic heights of Mad Men. But halfway through its run, I realized it didn't aspire to much at all. Shock factor, sure. But after separating conjoined twins, Christian and Sean's menage a trois with a prostitute resembling Sean's wife, Julia's near-murder of her mother, Matt and Kimber's drug-addled marriage, Gina's post-climax fall to her death... and of course, the incest... the territory was covered.

Oh right, and Matt was a mime who robbed convenience stores.

Originally the show was outrageous and grotesque, but it didn't take itself so seriously. The fatal move was relocating to Los Angeles, which only magnified its journey toward superficiality. If you're starting from the beginning, don't move with McNamara-Troy. Other TV shows have suffered the same fate when they jumped ship. Weeds began as a jaunty suburban satire, but the call of the Mary Jane blurred the creators' vision. Suddenly, in season four, the show has been reborn in Mexico after Nancy Botwin's drug ring burned her California suburb in a blazing wildfire.

Let's not forget Entourage, which has always been immersed in L.A. superficiality. But when I tuned in again last season, it was as if the creators hadn't felt the recession during their hiatus. Vince's first dramatic challenge was to buy new cars. And after Sushi-gate, it's hard to enjoy Jeremy Piven quite as much. Like Nip/Tuck and Weeds, I cut it off right there. No patch or gum required for quitting.

When I tuned back in this season to see if the groove was back, the hubbub was Vince's hair. Yes, dear readers, the plot revolved around a haircut. The dramatic tension? Movie re-shoots! What will he tell the director? What about his agent? If only Billy Wilder had thought to give Norma Desmond a new bob, just imagine how much greater Sunset Boulevard would be.

The season-changing hairdo. Everything you know is a lie.

TV shows these days jump the shark so easily. How many cast members will sleep together? How many children will have tragic deaths? Countless other shows (Hung, True Blood, Rescue Me, Grey's Anatomy) lost their integrity or never had any and vanished from my viewing schedule. I ask you readers: when did you sense your TV obsession was going downhill?