The Last Movie I Saw

I can trace my interest in film as something more than mere entertainment back to a series produced by the critic Richard Schickel for PBS back in the early seventies called The Men Who Made the Movies. In that series, Schickel interviewed a number of the greatest directors from Hollywood's Golden Age (a few of whom were still active at that time), including Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, Raoul Walsh, John Ford, and several others. Each episode traced the course of one man's career, with plenty of clips and attention to the common themes that ran through their work. Later, I would learn this was an auteurist approach to the subject of movies; that is, a strong director, whether he actually wrote the script or not, exercised the greatest influence over how a film turned out and their work could be recognized by certain signature elements that were somewhat consistent from one project to the next. Not every filmmaker was an auteur, but those who were, were largely responsible for the greatest movies ever made. It's easy to see how such a series could emerge from the early seventies, as that was in many ways the second Golden Age of strong directors. Guys like Ford and Hawks made their reputations in the thirties and forties; the 1970s saw a younger generation of guys like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Bob Rafelson, and lots more reassert that strong directorial voice in the best films of their generation. Sadly, the movie industry has moved away from a system that promotes that level of artistry-- not totally, but in large measure-- and so today's auteurs, especially in relation to big budget studio projects as opposed to small independent features, are few and far between. One of the exceptions is David Fincher, the director of The Social Network and before that, movies like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Zodiac, Fight Club, and Seven. If you know those movies, you know that each features a character or characters struggling to figure out how they fit into a world that is largely alien to them. The Social Network, based on the story of the founding of the Facebook internet community, may be Fincher's definitive statement on that theme. What's most remarkable about the movie (and a mark of Fincher's other work) is how the strong characterizations propel the story forward. In this case, that's essential, since the narrative "action" revolves largely around guys sitting at a computer terminal and typing. Yet the film is nonetheless exciting, because Fincher has mastered the art of depicting the inherent tension and conflict that exists in so much interpersonal communication; or, in the absence of such communication, the even greater skill of visually depicting the internal struggles of his characters. It helps that he has access to talented actors like Jesse Eisenberg here, but the fact that these traits are in evidence across his body of work strongly suggests this as the defining characteristic Fincher's autuerism, as much as Frank Capra's commitment to homespun individualism or Hawks' to his characters focus on getting a job done (not their only traits, of course, but certainly among their strongest). It's gratifying to know that it is still possible for someone working in the mainstream to aspire to and actually create great movies that reflect such strong personal visions, no less than what we expect from a a great painter or novelist. I may have written this before (after seeing Benjamin Button), but Fincher has solidified his spot on my very short list of directors whose work I'll go see regardless of what it's about, since I know he's going to make it both compelling to watch and intellectually stimulating.