THE SOCIAL NETWORK: ANOTHER VIEW

Gentle Readers,

On March 22nd I gave the movie The Social Network a pretty scathing review. It's perfectly well made but the Mark Zuckerberg character is so unlikable that it made the movie into a suckfest for me.

Last night Favorite Young Man and I were chatting about movies, and he said he finally saw The Social Network and he LOVED it. I said, REALLY?  You can't possibly be my child because that movie is a misogynistic suckfest and I hated it You know I hated it because the characters are so cruel.

He said the movie isn't really about Facebook. It's about being lonely and wanting to fit in.

Ahhhh, I said, as a the light bulb went on over my head in the cartoon drawing of me.

Then Favorite Young Man said he loved the Sean Park character and Justin Timberlake was great playing him. I said that I liked him too because he was the one charming character in the movie.

But Favorite Young Man said, Look, all Sean Parker does is introduce Zuckerberg to some people and take him to parties and Sean Parker ends up owning part of Facebook.

A whole ceiling-full of fluorescent bulbs went on over my head. I said, That fits in with your view of the movie. Of course the Zuckerberg character wants to do so much for Sean Parker because Sean Parker made Zuckerberg feel he fits in.

And I told F.Y.M. that in light (tee hee) of what he had said, I might watch the movie again and see what I think of it.

I quite often find that when I watch a movie a second time I like it better because I catch things I didn't notice before or I consider the opinion of the person with whom I'm watching it.

For example, Capote: I was so excited about seeing Capote a few years ago. Philip Seymour Hoffman had won the best actor Academy Award for playing Truman Capote during the time he researched the murders of the Clutter family in Kansas and wrote In Cold Blood -- a book I love.

Then I saw the movie and it was dull and the pace was slow and I wasn't impressed. But I watched it again with Someone I Love, who pointed out that the pace reflected the dull and endless Kansas landscape and the long wait for the murderers to be executed so Capote could finish his landmark work of non-fiction in the form of a novel.

Light Bulbs! And then I really liked the movie and I liked it even more the third time I saw it.

So one of these days, I just might give The Social Network another chance, thanks to F.Y.M.'s interesting take on the movie.

Infinities of love,

Lola