The importance of David Fincher

I was on pins and needles since I learned about Fincher's latest work, "The Social Network." For one I am a devoted fan of the man and second I was challenged by the fact that after a film that corresponded more to Classic Hollywood taste, he would follow again the path of the underdog who undermines any conventional ideas on cinema, society and life. And what's more, the film is based on the the life of the creator of facebook. So the first thought was, what will this director who deals with introvert personal experiences do with this topic? Well, with some help by the great Aaron Sorkin, he created a masterpiece that redeems him from the mediocre Benjamin Button (let us forget that he ever made what is merely a good suspense film, "Panic Room").


Let us concentrate on "Seven" "The Social Network" "Fight Club" "Zodiac" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." In these films, probably his best to now, there is I would argue a certain pattern of themes and expressive motifs. And I shall display how I believe that Fincher has marked with his unique signature the end of the 90s but as well the end of this decade.

The common thread between these films is the director's focus on his human subject, the protagonist who delivers a subjective outlook onto the world that is also the director's view of the world, moreover of a certain theme or idea. "Seven," the story of a serial killer investigation, is even more the story of one man's struggle, Detective Sommerset, to come to terms with this cruel world that seems even more like Dante's Purgatory. In the end this outlook is delivered simply, through literature, without any great dramatic overtone, but with the intensity of a quiet realization: "Hemingway said once that the world is a beautiful place and worth fighting for. I'll agree with the second." Here is then the first great film of a director who delivers his own outlook of the world, a sublime image of a dying century.




Similarly, In Zodiac we follow three men who drive themselves to the extreme through their obsession with the Zodiac killings in the seventies. Fincher demonstrates in this masterpiece another police investigation, which is the director's cause for delivering more sublime themes which are built gradually and through the personal experience of each character. The film pertains a bizarre pace, as primarily it is an account of true events, as in most films of the genre.


Gradually the narrative becomes even more loose, and the direction and general rhythm of Zodiac becomes even more hypnotizing, as we enter the psyche and obsession of Robert Graysmith. He becomes the penultimate cinematic hero of one man who seeks redemption and truth through an obsessive search for the real Zodiac. The film adopts the view point of a man who sees almost in every corner danger, suspects, conspiracies and that one truth which is so close yet so far. Not at all uncommon themes for a film that deals with the seventies, an era which Sydney Pollack and Alan J. Pakula scrutinized for its dark political conspiracies and secret wars. As in Pakula's 1974 "the parallax view"
one man seeks the truth where he sees it and is driven to a dead end through an obsessive search for this. In "Zodiac" we go deeper and deeper into one man's experience of this dead end, of this exploration of the darkest side of man but also of the darkness that dwelt in post-Vietnam and Watergate America.

In the aforementioned films I have described how personal view-points on certain themes are delivered to the screen. They are essentially different in meaning and context. Nevertheless, they are built on one common notion: People driven to extreme points. In "Seven",detective Mills is driven by the ugliness of the world to the sin of wrath and Detective Sommerset becomes the witness of this phenomena and suffers quietly. In "Zodiac" Robert Graysmith loses everything and in the end is left with a terrible longing for a resolution, although he has already become addicted to the chase and the madness of his quest. Paul Avery and David Toschi as well pay a heavy price for starring into the abyss as Nietzsche wrote. It is this longing and deep desire for some kind of truth that leads to a dead end for the detectives of Zodiac.

In Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjammin Button and The Social Network, through subjective outlooks and narratives, Fincher deals with universal themes and collective encounters. In other words, the director starts from something specific and distinctive only to conclude to a general theme and conclusion. This may sound arbitrary but on the contrary it is what makes these three films stand out from the other.

In "The Curious Case of Benjammin Button" one man's bizarre and extreme condition becomes in the hands of Fincher the ground on which one central theme is built. The lust for life. It is the first half of the film that focuses on the demonstration of this theme than on a narrative, a clear cut conventional story, which sadly is the case for the rest of the film (which is due to the scriptwriter Eric Roth because of whom many have labeled the film Benjammin Gump). For some inexplicable reason that no science or religion can perceive, Benjamin Button is born an old man that gradually becomes younger and eventually gives into mortality. Before the film dives head-on into all the schematic and conventional metaphors (the inevitability of death, what is life, what is death, a huge clock that ticks away) and the awkward melodrama that is so unworthy of David Fincher, we follow a man and his actions which deliver a sublime theme, through the textures of life itself and not some two sided didactic metaphor.

During his stay in the house, we identify with Benjamin's gaze. As he becomes younger, all the aging people who are dying, cling onto him for this bizarre quality that he pertains. A demented old man repeatedly tells him the story of how many times he got struck by lightning, and yet survived.
Benjamin leaves to begin his romantic quest, to experience life and all that comes with it. And of course, when the amazing Tilda Swinton enters the equation, how could there not be a moment of greatness?

Tilda plays a rich woman who travels the world with her husband and is disappointed from her vacant and boring life. When she meets Benjamin she has her first encounter with this mystery that surrounds his youthful transformation. Without any form of pretext or any dramatic announcement, we see how Swinton clings onto this mystery of life and youth, as though Benjamin's state is contagious. This is the lust for life, that romantic concept that has been passed on from Lord Byron, John Keats, to the beatniks, Hemingway and Jack Kerouac who expressed their own desire for life and the open road through many encounters and journeys, like those of Benjamin.

Swinton's heroin is one more encounter in Benjamin's journey but it has affected her profoundly. This again is not announced to us in a (melo)dramatic manner, but through her own actions that point to this sublime theme. She decides to swim through the Atlantic ocean and to regain her passion in life. What is it that suddenly motivated her to change her life? We have to go back to this encounter and see how a mystical spiritual process began in her soul to drive her. That is the lust for life, which can't be felt or given form but which becomes a strong driving force. That is the theme of the film, a universal theme which occurs from a specific context only to acquire this universal personality that can cross over the borders of a Hollywood narrative. If only the film were cut at this point.

Up to now, in his career, it seems that David Fincher has yet to find his identity, his role as an auteur. It is often said that he makes a good movie after a bad movie, i.e Panic Room and Fight Club, Zodiac and Benjammin Button and now the social network. However, As I mentioned, there is a trend in his films to depicting human subjects at extreme points and their experience of this extremity. If however I may mark two films that show a certain path that could be this man's directorial zenith and which also are a mirror of their time, those are Fight Club and The Social Network. Let us not forget that he initiated with Zodiac the use of the digital Thomson Viper Filmstream camera which became in his hands a unique tool and a means to an end but not yet his ultimate signature. But let us see how exactly these two important films are touchstones of their time.

Fight Club is again the story of one individual who reaches a certain limit and the account of this experience. Tyler is a man lost in himself, marginalized by a Machiavellian society. He seeks his place in the harsh modern world, of capitalists and modern day opportunists. Ultimately this is a film that delivers one man's encounter with the modern western world and its offspring, the corporations and the economical strongholds which breed slavery and alienation. Although the film encompasses many other characters and their happenings, the film's bizarre narrative focuses on Tyler and his struggle to fit in, to realize why he is on this earth and how to cope with this ugly world, much like detective Sommerset. The film surprisingly is not didactic, in other words doesn't seek to distinguish for us what is right and wrong, since Tyler denounces the revolution, this utopia that a whole generation these days proclaims amongst images of Britney Spears and the ghost of Karl Marx.

Finally this individual's quest comes to an end and with that the destruction of any walls and boundaries. With the oneiric and prophetic scene of economic pilars exploding, Tyler comes to terms with his life thanks to the encounter with a human, Marla. Yes, it is all for love. That is the only engine of survival as Leonard Cohen once said when predicting the future. However, this time the director has left an even more sublime theme to stir at the bottom of Fight Club's immense cache of ideas. As we saw years later in Benjamin Button one man's story and clash with a certain situation or even with the whole world becomes the basis for a collective experience. In Fight Club there is the collective experience of capitalism, unemployment, anarchy, revolt, mayhem and the desire of a whole generation of 30 year old men to change the world which has become devoid of any promise. We were sold the myth that we would become rock stars, famous and rich and now we are pissed off. Sheep sent to the slaughter. This collective experience is one of the scars that we brought with us in the 21st century and which still hurts us. This film waved goodbye to the 90s with the worst prospects for the 00s.





And now, when one decade is almost over, The Social Network, like a sequel to Fight Club, presents to us the collective experience of man's absolute loss of identity, immersed 100% in the modern world.
This is the true story of Mark Zuckerberg, a typical representative of his generation, a byproduct of lifestyle obsessions. Primarily this is an individual's account of his escalation to the top of the food chain, to a position of great power and loneliness. It is a classic tale that has been told by Ancient Greek play writers and artists like Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick in Citizen Kane and Barry Lyndon respectively.
One man's experience of deep envy, insecurity, pettiness and lust for revenge become the canvas on which Fincher, more apparently than ever, displays an array of characters and their happenings. 21st century western society has abandoned any notion of change or even revolution and has surrendered to the ideals which Tyler was fighting. Here is then the collective experience of total alienation and the loss of identity. This is such for all the individuals of The Social Network.

The most beautifully portrayed personality is that of Sean Parker, who comes across as the great mind who created Napster, who is immensely popular and hype. On the contrary he is a deeply insecure and weak man who has adopted the persona of a stereotypically cool person because only this title offers any prestige in this spiritually dilapidated world which is maybe no longer worth fighting for or resisting. This is a generation of students who seek superficiality through lifestyle, temporary popularity and self ridicule (the brilliantly dark and mortifying scenes of the fraternity trials at Harvard who promote empty ideals and the loss of human dignity).


Interestingly, the Facebook works as a means to an end and not as a core subject. It is a material reflection of our loss of identity and alienation. Hence the film's final chilling sequence of Zuckerberg waiting for a friend request acceptance from his ex girlfriend who warned him not to lose his integrity and friends for superficial fame and money.

Fincher has offered us striking testaments of two centuries and of our struggle to accept this changing and challenging world which we have created in our image. It is good to know that cinema will always offer a mirror of life to make us wonder and dream.