Psyched for The Social Network

I'm not one to tout a movie based solely on the merits of one Mr. Pete Travers, but he makes a compelling case, and for what it's worth, I think that the excitement the idea of movie like this offers can't be argued with. Rare, and perhaps never truly done right, has there been a dramatization based on such an important figure in his own time, before the man has even left his twenties. It's modern Americana, and you couldn't even make it up. It's a tale that only the brash intellectuality of an anti-intellectual society would breed.

The themes are probably obvious, but ripe: ambition, obsession, alienation, deception, greed. In fact, they're quite in your face, every ad designed to slap you with the torpid stare of a punk kid from white plains that gains "more friends than Jesus". A boy whom we will likely discover needs to have not just friends, but followers, willfully brings them to him by the virtue of a single concept that gets him more than he bargained for. This is just the bag of thrills I was looking for.

Social Network

But what I'm most excited about is the soundtrack. I have to confess, I was a bit on the fence about seeing the movie until Trent Reznor came on board. He and Atticus Ross at their peak, having just done an instrumental record together that laid the groundwork for what you hear on the sample. Sounds good. And the tracks are a bit more than what you would expect. I recall some talk of how fantastic it would be if NIN built the sound for the new Terminator movie, but that might have been the wrong move for Reznor, adding in the fact that Terminator 4 was not the movie anyone wanted. It would have come off bloated and post 80's, I think.

No, there is a direct darkness to each tune, much more in the vein of Ghosts, that lends itself well to the story of a brilliant twerp who wins not the just the girl, but all of them. Here, Reznor and Ross make Hollywood work. The Gentle Hum of Anxiety pierces the spleen of a generation that wants to believe the question of soul doesn't matter. It is the tale we've been waiting for, one of a moment of genius that comes from a drunken night to become something we hadn't even dreamed of, fueling the crushing ambition it takes to conquer our world, every opportunity said yes to, every person stepped on the way to get there. This isn't a heart warming success story, it's the truth to the cost of ambition, the entry fee to the upper echelon of greatness.