Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you have won the lottery, found your dream mate, got ripped abdominal muscles, hit the maximum allowable number of friends on Facebook, and need some morbidly disillusioning, hideously ambient electronic music to bring you crashing back down to Earth. Avoid it... if the sun don't shine no more and you're proofreading your suicide note. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The Social Network: (Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross) The social networking website Facebook is populated by two segments of the global community: insecure individuals seeking futile confirmation of their worth to society and businesses jumping on a popular bandwagon because they're told it's the right thing to do to reach younger consumers. It's a popularity contest of global proportions, masking itself as a convenient tool with which to keep in touch with friends and family while in fact destroying society by encouraging people to value their online communication over face-to-face interactions. Countless Filmtracks visitors have asked over the latter half of the 2000's why this site has no official presence on any social networking venue, and the simple answer is always the same: why waste time maintaining a Facebook account when it could be spent with real people or, at the very least, writing reviews like the one you're reading right now? Given how dispiriting the concept and implications of Facebook can be, rivaling a shopping experience at Wal-Mart in real life, it's not surprising that the basic circumstances behind the site's creation are equally distasteful. Those loose facts were the basis of Ben Mezrich's 2009 book "The Accidental Billionaires" and David Fincher's 2010 cinematic adaptation, The Social Network. The film conveys the juvenile and messy origins of the Facebook site, from a silly diversion on a college campus to the lawsuits that resulted from those who were involved with its founder at its inception in 2004. The college students and their associates who created the site are not entirely likeable people, making The Social Network both laughable and horrifying. In a way, it's like a car wreck that you can't turn away from, and Fincher's portrayal of this slice of history has earned significant critical praise and box office success. The director turned to Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor to write music for The Social Network, and although Reznor initially turned the project down, he was eventually impressed enough by the script to enlist the help of collaborator Atticus Ross to write music for the concept that extends out of material they had produced in the past. Ross had more previous experience writing film music, though Reznor seems to maintain primary credit for The Social Network. Some of the music they provided for the film consists of re-workings of tracks from their 2008 album "Ghosts I-IV," a product that Reznor considered an ambient soundtrack for daydreams and thus the starting point for this film score. Fans of Reznor and Ross will hear nothing particularly groundbreaking in The Social Network, therefore, and the score is understandably aimed at their collectors rather than those of traditional film music. Original music of significant size was eliminated from consideration, a convenient choice fiscally but also an excuse to attempt one of those "radically different" kinds of film scores that beats you over the head with a murky environment rather than actually accomplish anything musically. As a solo album, Reznor and Ross' achievement for The Social Network has its place. Unfortunately, looking at it as a film score, you can't get help but be reminded that these men are novices in the genre. Apologists will claim that the music, like that of Clint Mansell, is revolutionary, the tell-tale sign that a really awful score for a "different" kind of film is trying to masquerade as something more intelligently conceived than it actually is. Every moment of the music for The Social Network is an exercise in disillusionment, the kind of morbidly drab electronic atmosphere that encourages drug users to dive headfirst into the realm of suicidal thoughts. Sunny outside? Don't bother. Apparently, the sun never shone when Facebook was being created, either. The ensemble consists of keyboarded samples and electric guitars, both of which processed to death in all sorts of obnoxiously artificial ways. Think of all the noises that major household appliances and computer accessories make when they start failing, or the sounds of an automotive body shop and mechanic's bay. Think of the sounds of rail cars being hitched or garbage trucks lifting and banging dumpsters. Think of jackhammers and pile-drivers. Now lower the pitch of all those pleasant sounds, extend their duration three or four times in length, and imagine them as an aimless musical device... abrasive, slightly organized sound effects in a basic loop for four minutes. Behold manipulation upon manipulation of sounds that were, before much of the audience was born, organic. Vague hints of harmonic ease are perpetually obscured by the haze of dissonant layers of grinding, droning noise. The score's only theme, heard in extremely slow, practically comatose piano renderings over this fog in "Hand Covers Bruise" and several places thereafter, is the ultimate downer. Narrative flow and synchronization points are foreign ideas to these performers, further exposing the score as being better applied to the market as a solo album. In construct, there is nothing in this music to reflect the creation of accidental billionaires, much less the concepts of legal intrigue, interpersonal conflict, or even accurate representations of technology. The score is laced with tones from the 1980's, a completely ridiculous choice of base from which to create music for a film about the 21st Century's first online superstar. The cue "In Motion" is about as wretched as anything to grace a film score in years, taking 80's video game sound effects and old midi music style and resurrecting them for an inappropriate occasion. In Tron: Legacy, these sounds are understandable, but here? Likewise, another laughable moment comes in Reznor's adaptation of "In the Hall of the Mountain King," an amazing feat of torture that must have Edvard Grieg spinning in his grave. Otherwise, a 66-minute album is as redundantly insufferable as any score in recent memory, with no standout cues, no beginning, no end, no suspense, no adversity, and, most importantly, no sense of accomplishment. Sure, the characters aren't likeable, but they're certainly not as two-dimensional as this music suggests. Reznor and Ross may have met Fincher's expectations, but this film could have used more than a time-inappropriate, peripheral Nine Inch Nails album. The film licensed eighteen songs to more accurately convey the less depressing emotions necessary in certain scenes, but none of these songs (including the rare appearance of a song by The Beatles in any film) is included on the soundtrack. That album was released by Reznor's own label, first for free as a five-track download teaser and then commercially in full form. In the end, The Social Network is music for the sake of music, not music for the sake of film. When you watch American football and see players take a blow to the head and lie motionless on the field for five minutes before walking groggily to the sidelines with much assistance, this music is the kind of noise that they must hear in their helmets as their sloshing brains suffer the initial effects of a concussion. FRISBEE Track Listings (Sampler Album):
Total Time: 21:24
Track Listings (Regular Album):
Total Time: 66:11
All artwork and sound clips from The Social Network are Copyright © 2010, Null Corporation (Sampler), Null Corporation (Regular). The reviews and notes contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Filmtracks Publications. Audio clips can be heard using RealPlayer but cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 12/13/10, updated 12/13/10. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 2010-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. Buffoonery! |
Sampler Album