Never Let Me Go (***1/2)

NEVER LET ME GO
Directed by Mark Romanek

***1/2

I guess I understand why the posters and trailers for Never Let Me Go try to hide the fact that it's a science fiction film. It's a genre that has become overloaded in various cliches (usually involving space ships and extra-terrestrials), and when films like this (dealing with human emotions and love) come along, it's hard to really market it successfully. There was a similar issue in 2006 with Children of Men, a sci-fi masterpiece that also dealt with more humane characters. Universal botched the marketing on its release, and though it's now considered a contemporary classic, you couldn't pay someone to see it when it first came out. I don't know if Never Let Me Go will have the same fate, but you can't blame the promotions for pushing the "We have an amazing cast!" angle. Especially when you consider that the cast includes three of the most talented and exciting English actors working today.

In Hailsham Academy during the mid-1970's, a large group of children are taught and housed in a very strict, intentional fashion. Every child is watched over by the academy's headmistress Miss Emily (Charlotte Rampling) with a terse eye. They're never allowed to leave the estate or interact with any other children who may be from outside of Hailsham. Three of those children are Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth, whose intelligence seems to be higher then the rest of the students. Tommy is an outsider amongst the rest of the boys and is known for throwing wild, violent tantrums, but Kathy offers him friendship because she finds him to be a sensitive alternative to the rest of the rowdy boys and takes a liking to him. Soon after, with almost spiteful haste, Kathy's best friend Ruth offers Tommy her heart and he accepts as Kathy watches with rampant jealousy.

The children are not totally privy as to why they are holed up in at Hailsham, but when a new guardian, Miss Lucy (Sally Hawkins), comes to teach their class, she becomes overwhelmed by what she has seen and spills the truth to them: they are clones created to give organs for people who may otherwise die. They are part of a medical system developed in the last century that has helped create cures for many terminal illnesses, and they will likely not even live to middle age. Immediately after stating the truth, Miss Lucy is dismissed, but Kathy, Tommy and Ruth never forget what they've learned. Later, when they're eighteen, Kathy (Carey Mulligan), Ruth (Keira Knightley) and Tommy (Andrew Garfield), are moved to The Cottages where they prepare for their lives as "donors".

By this time, Ruth and Tommy's relationship has matured sexually but not emotionally. Kathy watches them from afar, still hurt that her friend would steal her crush, but still too timid to disrupt their relationship. In The Cottages, the three learn of a rumor: if two donors can prove that they love each other, they can request a "deferment", which can give the two in love at least a few years of freedom to be together before they're sent off for surgeries. Ruth and Tommy seem genuinely interested in the idea, but Kathy has grown weary thinking of their future and applies to become a "carer", which is someone who looks after the donors as they depreciate during their surgeries. But being a carer doesn't totally dismiss your donor responsibility. It only postpones it, and Kathy begins to see if she can find a way to experience this "deferment" she'd heard of, before she loses her chance.

The film is based on the acclaimed novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. Like the film, the book is broken into three equal parts: the Hailsham childhood years, the teenage years at The Cottages, and lastly, the adult years before "completion". I'm not sure how much the film benefits from having such a strict adherence to the source material's structure. The film's few pace issues could have been solved by shaving quite a bit off of the first segment. But then again, I've never been a fan of the thirty-minute childhood prologue (which explains my distaste for the 1996 film Shine), so this could be just a matter of taste. I do think it helps my case, though, when you consider how much more exciting and interesting the last two-thirds of the film are.

A lot of that has to do with the tremendous collection of acting talent. Mulligan, Garfield, and Knightley all deliver first-rate performances and each perfectly create a distinct, nuanced character, complimenting each other exquisitely (in a fair world, both Mulligan and Knightley would be in line for Oscar nominations, but that doesn't seem like the forecast). As other films like The Island have shown, it's difficult to tell the story of a "clone", but Never Let Me Go doesn't really seem to get hung up on problems like that. Instead, the film treats them as they should be, like real people. The fact that they are not de facto people doesn't prevent screenwriter Alex Garland (also wrote the two Danny Boyle films 28 Days Later... and Sunshine) from treating them as though they are. For all the hangups I may have felt hampered the first third of the screenplay, Garland's script is incredibly absorbing, filled with just enough drama and intrigue to allow the viewer to really care.

The film was directed by Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo and more interestingly - as I found on IMDB - the music video for Michael Jackson's "Scream"), who is able to successfully pull off the balance between the sci-fi and romance elements. Any trailer would have someone figuring that Never Let Me Go was just a stuffy romantic costume drama, but it's a lot more dense then that. There are several levels of emotional turmoil here and Romanek balances all of the thematic elements pretty competently. Sure, it helps when you have Mulligan, Garfield, and Knightley to express the emotional core of your themes, but there have been other films with better casts that weren't able to generate the emotional reaction that this film does.

I can see some people seeing Never Let Me Go and being a bit disappointed with its science fiction elements. If all I knew about the film was from the trailer, I would have figured it to be a well-cast period romance. Not that the film isn't a period romance, but when you bring any kind of clone into the mix, you're bound to trigger certain prejudices from the audience. Whatever category you may try to shoehorn the film into being, it succeeds because it deftly defies both romance and science fiction. It carries various aspects of genre while being earnest enough to rise above it. The best way to break away from genre pitfalls is to make sure that the characters come first, and Never Let Me Go makes sure that they're telling a story about people - well, kind of.

The Social Network (***1/2)

THE SOCIAL NETWORK
Directed by David Fincher

***1/2

It happened in a moment. But when it did, it was irreversible. Eight years ago, nobody knew what Facebook was. Today, for all young people, a world without Facebook seems like a world without television or Oxygen (for some). When a cultural phenomena sparks and flies as quickly as Facebook has this past decade, it seems almost inevitable that there would be a film made about it. Leave it to David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin to take this concept and develop it into a film that is fully engrossing and entertaining, even if it does lack a plentiful amount of information and facts.

The popular site was started by Mark Zuckerberg who, in this film, is a very sarcastic, defiant persona embodied by Jesse Eisenberg. We learn very early that he is involved in two very serious, very expensive lawsuits - one against his best friend. But the creation of Facebook begins well before all that, when he is a student at Harvard. He has just been dumped mercilessly by his girlfriend Emily (Rooney Mara). Afterward, he is inspired to go on a late night bender, developing a website that takes a photo of every girl in the school and asks you to compare "who is hotter?". He hacks into the school's database to get the pictures of every girl on campus and gets the site into the Harvard internet server, all while blogging about it relentlessly and being drunk on beer. By four o'clock in the morning, the site has gotten so many hits in that one night that it overloads the entire internet server and it crashes down.

Embarrassed and shocked that Mark defeated their internet security system so easily, the Harvard AD board put Mark on academic probation for six months. By that time, though, his name has become synonymous with infamy across campus and he catches the eye of the wealthy, pro-rowing brothers Cameron Winklevoss (Armie Hammer) and Tyler Winklevoss (Josh Pence). They approach him with the idea for a Harvard social networking site. When Mark asks why it is different from other sites like MySpace or Friendster, they reply with the magic word: exclusivity. Mark agrees to join the project, and asks his best friend Eduardo (Andrew Garfield) to put up the money for the development process and be the business manager. Of course, Mark doesn't mention the Winklevosses to Eduardo and as Mark's rapid development of "The Facebook" gets more and more sophisticated (relationship statuses, photo collections, The Wall), he decides to launch the site on his own.

Very quickly, the site grows throughout Harvard and the Winklevosses are understandably indignant that Mark would take their idea and go forward with it on his own. Mark says that they only offered him the concept, but he is the one who really invented Facebook. When Eduardo learns of the Winklevosses, he's distressed to find that their idea may not have been completely original. Facebook begins to expand to universities across the country, including Stanford, where it's discovered by Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake). When Sean meets with them, he woos them with ideas of complete expansion and becoming billionaires. But as Sean's influence becomes bigger and bigger, Eduardo's becomes smaller and smaller until it is nearly nonexistent. Just as the the site's popularity is reaching its apex, Mark is being sued by both Eduardo and the Winklevosses for tens of millions of dollars.

The film is an adaptation of the book "The Accidental Billionaires" by Ben Mezrich, which is well-known to be rooted almost entirely in fiction. Zuckerberg himself has spoken out against the film, and who could blame him; it certainly paints him as narcissistic and sleazy. In many ways, this is a film truly about Mark trying to become less of an asshole, except that he never succeeds (in other words: if I were Zuckerberg, I'm not sure I'd be the biggest fan either). The book was adapted by Aaron Sorkin of West Wing fame, and he turns this tale into a rapidly-paced travel through the renaissance of social media that was Facebook. Sorkin does an impeccable job of keeping the pace moving and the dialogue sharp, so that we're never overwhelmed by the avalanche of technological and legal jargon that the film shoves down our throat throughout.

Surely, there are many moments when the film wants to have it both ways: to be a formal piece of historical fiction and a witty retelling with clever showcases of pithy dialogue. Throughout the entire movie, I was struck by this one realization: I'm not sure the world within this film really exists. Sure, it would be amazing if it did, I'd like to see twin brothers like the Winklevosses speak in rhythmic patterns of repartee. Everyone in this universe seems like a professional humorist - even the Dean of Harvard is a master of quick-witted banter. That said, this is probably the greatest film that Sorkin has ever written (also penned Charlie Wilson's War, An American President, and A Few Good Men), since he has finally allowed his Mamet-like skills with dialogue and pace to be part of a film that can actually employ it effectively. He's no longer forced to bog down his style with political intrigue, but instead is set free in a way that has never been seen and what follows is a stupendous display of dialogue.

And those words are put into some very capable, young actors that deliver this script in a very proficient and effective way. Jesse Eisenberg, in playing Zuckerberg, shows once again his uncanny ability to pick roles that he'll be good at. After Zombieland and how big this film is sure to be, he should finally be the nebbish, alternative movie star we've been waiting for since Woody Allen decided to stop acting. Rashida Jones, Brenda Song, as well as Garfield, Hammer, Pence, and Mara, all give exceptional supporting performances. But the key performance to this excellent film is Justin Timberlake (a sentence I never thought I'd write on this blog). Out of everyone, Timberlake is the only actor who perfectly understands Sorkin's cross between snarky shrewdness and human drama, and his scenes are the most vibrant and exciting. Yeah, I'm talking about that Justin Timberlake.

On the David Fincher scale, The Social Network is a whole lot closer to the brilliant Se7en and Zodiac then it is to the overblown, overwrought, overrated Fight Club and Curious Case of Benjamin Button. There are very few filmmakers that make me fluster violently from one direction to the other. For one, there is no one better at showing his own polish. The Social Network may be the most stylish film that we see all year, with cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth making the bronze-like tone throughout the film seem particularly slick. All things considered, he's become very important in the filmmaking community and all of his movies have become like sponsored events. This film especially, since it has the gall to tackle the most popular website in the short, but illustrious history of the internet. I think Fincher puts a lot of stock in being perceived as an "important filmmaker", and while it can sometimes lead to the grandiose ejaculation of ego that was Benjamin Button, it can sometimes produce films as likable as this one.

I don't think this film will let down the young crowd of Facebookers, since it moves briskly and is filled with humor that is both smart and broad. I do wonder why this film chose to go in a direction which everyone involved has said is completely untrue. This would be more forgivable if the film really took any kind of stance on Facebook itself and commented on its monolithic effect on today's culture and society, but there is very little in the way of parable or argument. But whether or not this movie is a true collection of events leading to the creation of Facebook seems to be besides the point, since if social media has proven anything, it's this: the most interesting version of the story will end up becoming the truest version of the story.