David Fincher Pantheon: Splendor Cinema Podcast #85

Tomorrow Jon and I are recording our 85th Splendor Cinema Podcast, adding another director to our rapidly expanding "Pantheon" (previous entrants include Kubrick, Kurosawa and Capra). This time it's David Fincher's turn - so we'll be going through his (relatively small) filmography, rating our favourites. Jon wrote a short summary of Fincher's career and style on his blog and I promised to do the same. So here we are.

With the exception of 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' (which I saw in 2008 and am in no hurry to see again), I've seen all of Fincher's movies, from 'Alien 3' to 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo', quite recently - many of them for the first time. The first thing I would say about him is that he's not what you might classically call an auteur (if such a thing even exists). He seems to me like a hired gun with a highly developed sense of style - a point seemingly reinforced by the nature of his next project: a big Jules Verne adaptation for Disney.

At one point in his career you might have been able to pinpoint a particular genre that he specialised in (the thriller), but some of his best films don't fit that mould comfortably even if they generate the same tense atmosphere - as is the case with 'The Social Network' and 'Fight Club'. In fact most of his recent choices - excluding the down and dirty 'Dragon Tattoo' - have tended more towards dramatic Oscar-candy, albeit with moodier-than-usual lighting.

Not that I'm complaining about his newer stuff. Personally, I like a degree of light and shade in my movies, so I find some of Fincher's most acclaimed early work near unwatchable (or at least unenjoyable): unremittingly grim, hyper-cynical and mean-spirited. In particular I'm referring to 'Seven', which is at times not even two steps removed from torture porn. The twist is predictable, the characters are no more than recognisable archetypes and the views they express (which are ultimately vindicated by the ending) range from nihilistic to downright anti-social.

Its champions will say it's "dark" - an overused catch-all term that usually assumes instant cachet to anything heartless (or anti-sentimental). But when everything and everybody in a movie is horrible, forgive me for not wanting to spend any time there. Even his take on the determinedly nasty 'Dragon Tattoo' has more heart than 'Seven'. I much prefer his two subsequent thrillers: 'The Game' (great, if implausible, premise and a sense of humour) and 'Panic Room' (great and slightly more plausible premise which uses limited space ingeniously).

But for me his greatest film to date is 'The Social Network': because it sees him marry his grungy vision of the universe and undoubted technical brilliance to what might otherwise have been a filmed stageplay. He elevates already great material, with Aaron Sorkin's Facebook entrepreneur story not naturally cinematic - clever as it is. By combining Sorkin's talky, smartest-guy-in-the-room internet nerds with the atmosphere and look of 'Zodiac', you get a really brilliant, intelligent, gripping movie. A fact not lost on the makers of 'Moneyball', who repeated the same trick last year.

Though even 'The Social Network' is not without Fincher's worst excesses. The slow-motion boat race in the middle may be an example of bravura technique, but it feels out of place and showy in the middle of that movie. This same over the top streak can be glimpsed in all of Fincher's films (perhaps with the exception of the unfairly maligned 'Alien 3'). For instance that pointless zoom inside the keyhole during the break-in sequence of 'Panic Room'. There are a million and one similar moments in 'Fight Club'.

Perhaps the one film where all these visual ticks and grand camera movements work completely is 'Zodiac', which uses lots of CGI (like pretty much all his movies) to allow for extremely elegant, long, otherwise impossible (or at least impractical) tracking shots. The best example of this dramatically tracks a single taxi cab across San Francisco zooming closer gradually from an aerial view until we're inside the car.

To hear Jon violently disagreeing with me about 'Seven' and for a little more depth on some of the films I've skimmed over here (like 'Fight Club'), download episode 85 of the podcast when it becomes available early next week.

In Defence of Rooney Mara's Sensitive Salander

The following contains spoilers relating to the ending of the recent David Fincher adaptation of 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo'.

I'm unable to sleep and - in lieu of any new films to review in the first few weeks of January (call me closed minded but I have no desire to sit through 'The Iron Lady' unless I have to) - I thought I'd spitball here about something that's rattling around inside my head. It relates to the very end of the David Fincher/Steve Zaillian version of 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' - which I found far more interesting and exciting than the glorified TV movie that came out of Sweden a couple of years back. In fact I'm listening to the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross soundtrack as I type this.

At the end of this new version - and I've no idea whether this is accurate to Stieg Larsson's original novel or not - punk, computer hacker, motorcyclist, bisexual, tattoo-loving Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), unseen and from a distance, looks lovingly at male protagonist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig). She seems to want a future with him or at the very least some affection. However she sees he's leaving his office with a female colleague and rides off into the night, her hopes dashed - feeling betrayed and, we suspect, with any residual faith in men she might have had shattered.

I bring this up because a friend of mine took to Twitter tonight feeling "betrayed" that the "antihero succumbs to the Hollywood hunk" and I think that's a gross simplification. I get where she's coming from but I think she's wrong. And rather than explain why over a series of aggressive, timeline-hogging 140 character bursts I thought I'd do so here. This post is for you Abi.

I get why you might feel betrayed by the sight of a strong female character - whose raison d'etre is, pretty much, to give men the finger - seemingly smitten by Daniel "007" Craig at the end of the movie. Even those with the mildest sensitivity to gender politics will hear alarm bells ringing during that moment if viewed in those terms. But the more I've pondered this scene the more impressed I've become with the film - to the point where I feel driven to defend it at length and at 2am.

My defence of the offending scene can be divided into two neat categories. Firstly, to lead with the more dispassionate rebuttal, I find this climax to be a tidy piece of screenwriting from Steve Zaillian. Basically he creates an ending where none truly exists (at least in the Swedish version). This is our hero at the culmination of her arc: will she find a last shot at redemption in Craig? Can she live a "normal" life now? Or will she always be a damaged, untrusting outsider? The answers are "no", "no" and "yes" respectively.

The open-ended Swedish film (below) seems far more cynical to me. It ended in a way which suggested (and indeed yielded) further episodes of a grim detective serial. It acted as a pilot for a formula TV series, making us wonder "what ever will the mismatched duo solve next week?" Zaillian gives his version a pleasing sense of dramatic resolution, even if the ending itself is not exactly heart-warming. It also ensures the film isn't totally nihilistic and totally black hearted, which I think is a good thing.

This rather sombre, hopeless climax sees Lisbeth potentially doomed to play this avenging angel character for the rest of her life. That she rides off into the darkness alone, and further embittered, is not, to my mind at least, a typical "Hollywood" ending.

Secondly, and more to the point, this ending absolutely satisfied me in terms of what it said about the character. This is not the blank psychopath - that walking revenge fantasy with spikey hair - as played (to perfection) by Noomi Rapace. Her only visible emotions were barely concealed fury and contempt for humankind. In Fincher and Zaillian's version Lisbeth is a genuine and troubled person. She is allowed to show fear and distress. She is even allowed to smile. She is tough, for sure, but she is also vulnerable and in need of salvation. You never had any doubt Rapace would kick everbody's asses, whilst you worry about Rooney Mara even though she is super-smart and (as evidenced by the attempted mugging scene) not exactly helpless.

Crucially, it does not escape her own notice that she is increasingly as depraved as those who've wronged her and this is the film's single biggest strength.

In the Swedish version (my only other frame of reference for the character) she is a sexual predator when she - out of nowhere - decides to sleep with Blomkvist. In the "American" version (a tricky term in itself, with the film shot in  Sweden with a predominantly Swedish crew under the stewardship of the same Swedish production company) this scene plays differently. Here is an undercurrent that this is another manifestation of her own history, as a victim of sexual violence. She gives up her body very casually, not in the manner of one who is free and liberated but as one who has been desensitised against the act.

I think an extra layer of depth is revealed if we consider her backstory too: Lisbeth has spent most of her life in the custody of the state because she once set fire to her abusive father (a history hinted at in the opening credits, which run like an S&M enthusiasts version of a Bond title sequence). In a creepy kind of way she comes to see Blomkvist as a surrogate father - further complicating that ending, I think.

The relationship between Salander and Blomkvist is pleasingly nuanced. She is hostile when she first meets him, so I don't think Craig's "hunkiness" has much to do with anything. What she seems to respond to is (obviously) his desire to bring a killer of women to justice, but equally the fact that he is a loving, gentle father. There are several scenes which show us Blomkvist's teenage daughter and these seemingly exist solely to form this link in our mind. He is paternal and she craves a daddy. When she asks his permission before racing off to kill the baddie near the climax, is this a sign of weakness on her part? Perhaps. Perhaps there's even a trace of sadism. But I don't think it's as simple as a woman supplicating herself to a man.

It's also relevant to mention three key details in passing. Firstly, Lisbeth solves the central crime story faster than Craig (who is pretty lost without her). Secondly she saves him from certain death after he sheepishly blunders into the murderers house. It is then Lisbeth who pursues the villain to his end, having the final say. Thirdly, it's even Lisbeth that does Blomkvist's regular job for him: clearing his name (he's a journalist who's been falsely accused to making his stories up) and putting a major corporate criminal in prison. Lisbeth Salander three, Mikael Blomkvist nil.

This brings me back to that ending. When Mara looks at Craig she isn't seeing that rippling torso from the 'Casino Royale' promotional stills. Or even a great man who saved the world (he isn't). She sees the one person who hasn't let her down. The guy who's been nice to her and the guy who, in many ways, offers a shot at the father she never had. Again: this is creepy. But whatever you can say about it, it's not exactly what one would term a typical, cop-out, "sentimental" Hollywood ending even if she ended up with the guy. Which let's remember: she doesn't.

But let's brush all that to one side. Let's dismiss all of the above and take the text at face value, ignoring for a second all the themes and the arc of the character. Let's say she is in love with hunky Craig and is simply crestfallen when he doesn't seem to return her affections. I leave you with these questions: How is that ending either phony or anti-feminist or "Hollywood"? Doesn't heartbreak really happen to people? Doesn't love? Don't women get their feelings hurt? Speaking from personal experience, I know men do. Now I'm off to bed.

'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011)' review:

Having hated the Swedish film adaptations of Stieg Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy" - a series of unspeakably nasty TV movies - I wasn't looking forward to spending another 2 1/2 hours in that disturbing world courtesy of David Fincher's new English language version of 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo'. I never doubted Fincher's take would be slicker, more artful and, as a consequence, a more gripping experience than its European forbear, but I couldn't imagine taking any pleasure in the company of vengeful, anti-social computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (now played by Rooney Mara) and her boring investigative journalist friend Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig).

The 2009 film played like a boring sub-Agartha Christie detective story with bagfuls of added sadism, as we watch see our heroine subjected to every kind of injustice, and are afterwards expected to relish her "eye for an eye" take on brutal sexual violence. Yet this version at least understands that two rapes don't make a right.

Despite Fincher's reputation as a cold hearted bastard behind the movie camera, his version of the story (as scripted by Steven Zaillian) is a little more humane and, as a result, infinitely more enjoyable even if it retains all of the original's most unpalatable moments. It helps that this Lisbeth doesn't spend the entire film looking either indifferent or angry at the world, as Noomi Rapace's did. She is every bit as cold, sullen, bad-ass and capable (in a fight and as an ace investigator) when she needs to be, living in an equally gritty version of modern Sweden, but Mara brings out more of the character's vulnerability and fear, playing her as a tragic figure - a lifelong victim of violence at the hands of sadistic men.

With Mara's nuanced Salander even showing some affection and warmth, as well as contempt for manfolk, we can see her as more than just a leather clad angel of vengeance, every bit as "evil" as those she despises. She is a person who we feel for: whose triumphs we enjoy and whose relationships we can invest in. She is in fact a much more interesting character than the story she inhabits - a motorcycle riding punk with a photographic memory and a past she'd rather forget.

Whilst there are stomach turningly nasty sequences, mostly of a sexual nature, less emphasis is placed on violence in this version and, when Salander is transgressive, we relate that more to her troubled back-story and precarious mental health, instead of being encouraged to view her as an anti-hero and potential outlet for fantasies of "fuck you" nihilism. Mara enjoys good on-screen chemistry with Craig - who makes for an almost equally engaging Blomkvist - whilst the presence of Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård, Joely Richardson and Steven Berkoff, in the ranks of the nefarious family of aristocratic former Nazis, gives the dialogue some heft.

The book's tired murder mystery storyline - with Blomkvist invited to a remote island by an old patriarch in order to investigate the 40 year-old disappearance of a young girl - retains some crippling structural problems: Blomkvist and Salander don't meet until halfway through, whilst three separate plot threads never really connect satisfactorily. Yet this rote whodunit benefits from the overall improvement in cast, atmosphere and some typically inventive directorial choices. Sound is especially key to its success, as aided by a score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (fresh from Fincher's 'The Social Network'), this is consistently tense where the other film was just boring.

'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' is out now in the UK, rated '18' by the BBFC.

Trailers: Fincher's 'Dragon Tattoo' Looks Good, But 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' Less So

I really didn't at all like the Swedish adaptations of Stieg Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy": The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest. Personally, I found them to be more than a little nasty and I felt they were blandly made, with a television aesthetic.

However, David Fincher - hot off the excellent 'The Social Network' - has been busy making his own adaptation, which looks markedly better. The trailer below is pretty electrifying, helped a lot of fantastic editing to the beat of a really energetic cover of Zed Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" by 'Social Network' composer Trent Reznor and Karen O - who provided songs for Spike Jonze's 'Where the Wild Things Are'.



I may still dislike the tone and attitude of the eventual movie, but this is a fantastic trailer regardless and I'm now excited to see the film.

Less exciting is the latest trailer for 'Planet of the Apes' prequel, 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' - which stars Academy Award host and nominee James Franco, alongside Brian Cox and 'Slumdog' actress Freida Pinto. The trailer makes it look really boring, with shots of men in lab coats talking about genetics, intercut with the faces of unconvincing computerised primates. I don't really know who this movie is for, unless the franchise is much more popular than I realise.

To me it seems like the wisdom of the age dictates that all "properties" have to be continually "developed", and therefore we were give Tim Burton's lacklustre take on the series and now this (with a view to several sequels, I'm sure).

I'm not completely writing it off as it could be really good, but the trailer leaves me unconvinced.

May I'm mostly put off by the core concept: that a bunch of laboratory apes could overwhelm a well-equipped human army. This seems to me to be completely stupid. Just because the apes become more intelligent, I don't see why that means they aren't still gunned down en masse as soon as the trouble starts. I guess I'll have to see the film if I want to find out how they overwhelm the world of man. We know who ultimately wins after all.

'The Social Network' review:

This year few films have intrigued me more than David Fincher's 'The Social Network': a film about the founding fathers of the hugely successful Facebook website based on the book 'The Accidental Billionaires' by Ben Mezrich. The film focuses on the lawsuits filed against Mark Zuckerberg and ever since I read that 'West Wing' creator Aaron Sorkin had penned the screenplay, and that 'Squid and the Whale' star Jesse Eisenberg had been cast as Zuckerberg, I have been excited to see the finished film. Then, at the end of last month, the positive reviews began to come in and are yet to stop. It seemed as though everyone was calling it a masterpiece and awarding it "film of the year" status.

I worried that all this praise, coupled with my own longstanding interest in the film, might raise my level of expectation unrealistically high. After all, earlier this year my headlong descent into a world of hype left me a little underwhelmed by Christopher Nolan's 'Inception' and earlier this month a great weight of expectation probably played its part in my less than enthusiastic response to Palm d'Or winning 'Uncle Boonmee'. I needn't have worried, however, as it turned out that 'The Social Network' was actually better than I had ever anticipated. In fact I saw it for a second time within twenty-four hours.



Aaron Sorkin's reputation as a screenwriter has taken a few knocks in recent years as his TV follow up to 'The West Wing', 'Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip', was cancelled after one season and is generally disliked (though I was in the minority who enjoyed it), whilst he also scripted Mike Nichols' horrible 2007 film 'Charlie Wilson's War'. However his status as one of the best contemporary writers of dialogue has been completely restored as 'The Social Network' is, to my mind, his best work to date by some distance. I have always enjoyed the self-consciously clever and fast-paced style of his character's speech, but if I had one problem with his other work (even the best of it) it was that often it was all too clear who the "good guys" were.

'The West Wing' casts his White House staffers as shining white knights battling the forces of evil - Republicans (until the post-Sorkin addition of Alan Alda) always portrayed as though they are the snarling agents of Satan. Politically I was never upset by this representation, but however much it preached to this particular choir I tend to prefer more nuanced and humanistic depictions of people. In 'The Social Network' all of Sorkin's best qualities as a writer are evident whilst all the principle characters are fully formed and multi-dimensional. Much has been made of Zuckerberg having been portrayed unfavourably by the film - that it is a smear campaign against him - but I disagree with this.



As someone who has never met Zuckerberg (in fact I've never heard him speak) I can't vouch for how accurate the film is. I expect, like the film itself says, 85% of testimony is exaggerated (with the remaining 15% being fabricated altogether). Sorkin has said that his main duty is to storytelling and not to "truth". But regardless of what the truth of this story might be, within the world of the film all of the characters are pleasingly well rounded out. Zuckerberg is not portrayed altogether negatively, in fact I sympathised with him and even at times respected him (for his intelligence, self-belief and single mindedness). In fact the film questions its own validity at several points: set during two lawsuits the film positions all the actual founding of Facebook stuff as coming to us via each plaintiff's skewed testimony and referred to by Zuckerberg, more than once, as "lies".

Even Zuckerberg's best friend Eduardo (played by the new 'Spiderman' actor Andrew Garfield), who is perhaps the most obviously likable and sympathetic character, is not perfect: he is a rubbish businessman when it comes to understanding what Facebook can become and seeks to gain instant, easy profit from it in a way which may have damaged the site. As a counterpoint, Justin Timberlake's character, Napster co-founder Sean Parker, is probably the most obvious "villain" of the piece - threatening to throw Zuckerberg's empire into hedonistic chaos and freezing out Eduardo - yet he is also the one who sees the site's potential and helps to catapult it into the big time.



Then we have Armie Hammer skillfully portraying both of the rich, athletic and popular Winklevoss twins: Cameron and Tyler . Depending on your viewpoint they can stand as the instantly hateful examples of social inequality and of arrogant fraternity boys raised in privilege, but they are also shown to be fairly reasonable and decent people who have a real case against Zuckerberg - who they claim stole the Facebook idea from them. And we can also see why Zuckerberg might honestly believe he owes them nothing: "someone who makes a nice chair doesn't owe money to everyone who ever made a chair". Every character has an angle and nobody is cast as a hero or a villain. This well balanced script is also full of truly brilliant one-liners and more than one self-righteous and indignant tirade from Zuckerberg, delivered with intensity, and with a delicious air of spite and malice, by the ever-excellent Eisenberg.

Another great strength of Sorkin's screenplay is that it never makes any obvious comment about Facebook as a social phenomenon and its impact on our lives - save for one girl's throwaway remark that it's addictive - but plenty of allusions to its perceived evils are made in subtle ways. For example, Zuckerberg's ex-girlfriend played by the up-and-coming Rooney Mara (now confirmed as the star of Fincher's 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' remake) lambasts the Facebook founder for writing trash about her on his blog commenting on his need to write everything he feels: "as if every thought that tumbles through your head was so clever it would be a crime for it not to be shared."



As well as the great cast and the gripping, intelligent script, which doesn't shy away from technical detail and fizzes by at a rate of knots (evaporating the films 125 minute running time), there is also the direction of Fincher to admire. He is able to shoot this film, essentially about nerds arguing, in such a way that it plays as an effective thriller. This is aided in no small part by the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score which lends an air of foreboding to everything that takes place. The film's colour palette is reminiscent of Fincher's 'Fight Club' (also shot by Jeff Cronenweth) and helps to make every aspect of Harvard campus life seem seedy and undesirable thus enabling the film establish a tone which differentiates it from anything else about American college campus life.

'The Social Network' is a staggering film and an instant classic. It is often very funny and always very clever, with a script that doesn't infantilize its audience. It is also thrilling and exciting... and dark too. As with Darren Aronofsky's 'Black Swan' I am moved to say that this film is quite simply perfect. Historians and technology experts may disagree with the film's take on real events and I have some sympathy with business writer Andrew Clark at The Guardian when he asks: "does a 26-year-old businessman really deserve to have his name dragged through the mud in a murky mixture of fact and imagination for the general entertainment of the movie-viewing public?" Probably not. But whatever the "truth", and whatever the moral implications of this type of dramatised treatment of very recent history, 'The Social Network' is a quite brilliant piece of entertainment and a wonderful example of American cinema at its very best.

'The Social Network' is out now in the UK and is rated '12A' by the BBFC.

2010: What's left to look forward to?

I haven't done a trailer round-up for a while, but last night I was thinking about the remaining films for this cinematic year and making a note of the ones I am excited to see. One film I've had my eye on for well over a year, David Fincher's Aaron Sorkin penned 'The Social Network', is already out in the US (where it has earned something approaching universal acclaim) and comes to the UK on Friday (15th). The film, for those that don't know by now, is a biographical drama about the invention of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg - portrayed in the film by Jesse Eisenberg - and it boasts the best tagline of recent years: "you don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies."



I haven't been as excited by a trailer since 'A Serious Man' last year. Speaking of which, the new Coen Brother's film has a trailer now. 'True Grit' is a fresh attempt to adapt the Charles Portis novel of the same name about a young girl who hires an alcoholic and violent US Marshal, Rooster Cogburn, to hunt down her father's killer. This book was famously already adapted in 1969 and starred John Wayne (winning him an Oscar), but this one is supposed to be grittier and more faithful to the book and stars Jeff Bridges as Cogburn. I'm a huge Coen's fan so I'm really looking forward to this one. If it comes out in the UK on it's planned 25th of December release, then I'll certainly go out and see it on Christmas Day.



As I've reported before, in a previous trailer round-up, the new 'Tron' film also looks pretty interesting. Like 'True Grit', 'Tron Legacy' also stars Jeff Bridges, here reprising his cult 1982 role as Kevin Flynn. This sequel sees Sam Flynn enter the arcade game, created by the elder Flynn, to find out the truth about his father's disappearance. I love how the retro look of the original has been retained and how Jeff Bridges has been given a CGI makeover in some scenes so as to resemble his 1980's self. This could be fun.



Then there are two films hit it big in Toronto last month: British comic Richard Ayoade's coming of age comedy 'Submarine' and Werner Herzog's 3D cave painting documentary 'Cave of Forgotten Dreams'. There don't seem to be any official trailers for either film yet, so here is an interview with Ayoade in Toronto which has a few clips.



I'm sure to see 'Submarine' before the year is out (it's playing in a lot of festivals), though I don't have any idea when Herzog's film will be playing. However, Mike Leigh's 'Another Year' does have a trailer and a release date (5th of November in the UK). It looks like it could be everything I expect from Leigh: funny; poignant; well observed. Jim Broadbent looks to be in especially good form.



Finally, I've already seen both 'Black Swan' and '13 Assassins' in Venice, but both are coming out in the next month or so in the UK and both are remarkable. Aronofsky is now down to direct the next 'Wolverine' film and I hope to speak to him and his star, Natalie Portman, later this month when they come to London to promote the film ahead of its 11th of February release early next year. Both films (along with 'Submarine') are playing during the London Film Festival this month.





At the very beginning of next year (7th of January) and also playing in London is Danny Boyle's latest film: a true life account of a mountaineer who got trapped under a rock in an isolated cave and had to cut off his own arm to escape. Starring James Franco, '127 Hours' looks pretty good.