'The Social Network' triumphs at Globes

We don't know what it can be. We don't know what it will be. All we know is, it's cool.
--The Social Network

I want to thank everyone at Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, for his willingness to allow us to use his life and work as a metaphor for which to tell a story about communication and the way we relate to each other.
--Scott Rudin, producer 


Sony's The Social Network inevitably stole the evening. I'll be doing a rundown of the show as a whole for tomorrow's The Daily Gamecock, but for now, let's focus on what I said this weekend was all about: the mirrors.

Phase II is over. We blew through the Critics Choice and the Golden Globes in two days. Next Tuesday, we finally get the Oscar nominees, and then it's on to Phase III: the Guilds.

But with The Social Network winning four Golden Globes (Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, and Score), and The King's Speech, its supposedly biggest competitor and the nominations leader at the Globes, walking away with just the Best Actor trophy for Colin Firth, it feels like we're dealing with a wholly different beast.

And, for those who care about how accurate my predictions were: for film categories, I was 10/14. For television, I was 4/12, making me 14/26 overall. Combined with my performance at the Critics Choice, I was 31/51 on the weekend. Not my best work. Now for some analysis.

Sasha Stone over at my favorite AwardsDaily has compiled a pretty nifty chart of the major precursors thus far. To refresh everyone's memory, Social Network has won the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Society of Film Critics, the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the Critics Choice Awards, and the Golden Globes... not to mention what amounts to roughly 90% of all other regional groups. The way Stone computes it, no film since the Critics Choice Awards began 16 years ago has ever run that gauntlet. Slumdog was not the critics' favorite that year (it did not win L.A., N.Y, NSFC or SEFCA, but it did bowl over the industry awards).

Brokeback Mountain, which lost the National Society of Film Critics award to Capote, is the next-closest. It won everything else apart from the SAG Ensemble (which Crash won) before that upside-down night.

The Social Network is going to become a symbol of a lot of things. It's taking on a life of its own in cultural commentary, becoming a voice not only for this generation, but for how we can perceive this generation. It's about the very act of debating, it opens the floodgates for a new wave of young actors (Eisenberg, Garfield especially), catapults David Fincher even higher up the A list of Hollywood visionaries, and most importantly, it tells the studios that sharp, intelligent, potentially risky movies can work.

It's not an independent movie, fostered by a visionary director and producer, sold on the festival circuit and inevitably released in a few theaters before building a word-of-mouth campaign. They showed the first trailer for this movie in front of Inception. It was a wide release in the middle of the fall. It's been marketed and portrayed as a national cultural event since it came out. And guess what, that marketing strategy worked. No major studio release has won Best Picture since The Departed.

I now expect Social Network to handily win the Producers Guild, Directors Guild, and Writers Guild (Adapted). But now we all turn, mouths salivating, towards the Screen Actors Guild. On January 30, the day after the Directors Guild Awards, they choose Best Ensemble in what now becomes the most pivotal race of the year. If The Social Network wins this award, it will most likely perform a clean sweep of all major awards up to and including the Oscar.

And as far as I'm concerned, The King's Speech is done. It will fight for the Original Screenplay Oscar, win Best Actor, perhaps pick up Best Costume Design, and otherwise enjoy the spoils of about 10 nominations. Without the Golden Globe, it's hard to write about "the 1998 scenario" of Private Ryan/Shakespeare in Love, even with Harvey Weinstein's considerable weight behind it.

Rather, The Fighter has emerged as the scrappy underdog, the number two contender to take the heavyweight crown. Its uplifting, fight-to-the-top riffs will take on the brooding cynicism of The Social Network. Taking both Supporting Acting categories in the Critics Choice and Golden Globes, it also leads the Screen Actors Guild in nominations. Were The Fighter to win Best Ensemble at the SAG, a feat I daresay it can probably pull off given its Best Ensemble win at the Critics Choice, the entire Oscar race becomes a build-up machine.

We would have "Another 2005," "Another 1976," all waiting with baited breath to see which direction the Academy pulls. Does The Fighter, with its demanding acting and stylized rendition of a time-honored genre, come out on top, reaffirming the Academy's recent belief in honoring quasi-independent work? It is, after all, co-produced by the Weinstein Co. (though neither Harvey nor Bob have a producing credit), and their publicity machine is unlike any other. Or does The Social Network go ten rounds before delivering the T.K.O.?

This is what the race has become. Forget The King's Speech. It needs a miracle win in the Guilds to even stay viable. The actors, as they so often do, can control Oscar destiny.

But for now, in the wake of the Golden Globes, I'm left with this video of The Social Network's win for Best Picture. The wild applause, the haunted music, the powerfully eloquent Scott Rudin accepting, Eisenberg and Garfield rushing to join them on stage. These images and Rudin's terrific speech only make more evident the fact that more and more people are understanding:

This is a watershed film.