Social Network, The

Barring an enormous upset of (at least) Shakespeare in Love proportions, The Social Network has a slew of Oscars in the bag. Fittingly so.

So, fittingly, it is the first of 2010's award contenders I shall address.

To firmly understand my personal reaction to The Social Network one must take into account my age (34) my profession (screenwriter) and the man behind the camera (David Fincher).

I am not one of those film people who was in touch enough with young film-makers before the age of 18 to have known that "the awesome guy who was making some of the best music videos you've ever seen, and made Alien 3" was named David Fincher. He was nowhere on my radar until the autumn of my Freshman year of college when I went to see Se7en. This was a movie unlike anything I had seen before. It scared me to death. I hate the "sloth" sequence more than I hate the visual unpleasantness of say Slumdog Millionaire or Quills. But Fincher had me on the line. I was hooked. "What's in the box?" I say it on a daily.

This guy found a way to use Brad Pitt better than Redford, Zwick, Jordan, you name it. If he's not teaching me how to rob a convenient store with a hair-dryer, folks, this was the Pitt we wanted.  It helped, of course, that Morgan Freeman was on-hand and that Brad and Gwyneth were the new super couple -- Kenneth Brannagh and Emma Thompson having parted ways within weeks of Se7en's release. It also didn't hurt that they were psychotically beautiful and sporting matching aryan haircuts.

Nor did it hurt that we all came home to a winter-break where we Regians who attended the college JUG night sprinted to the Beekman for 12 Monkeys. That 1995 Brad Pitt one-two punch could not have helped Fincher more -- even though he was only the director of one of the pictures.

I went through college and was shipped off to Munich to conduct a relatively soul-devouring depressing research project -- the likes of which one would imagine takes place in the German Alps. But lo and behold I had discovered the English Language movie theater -- right across the street from Lowenbrau. Here I could forget my troubles and just hear English -- my native tongue -- pouring from the mouths of the Hollywood elite. What rapture it was. Especially the night I sat amongst a pack of Scandinavian exchange students and Munich's hip youth to see Fight Club. There's no point in writing an entire Fight Club treatise here. But let it be known that I routinely returned to the theater to listen to the dialogue, to avert my eyes from Jared Leto's post-pummel punim, and to rest easy in the notion that I would return to America to make movies -- not just study dead people who already had.

I also rested easily in the assurance that this David Fincher character wasn't just some brainiac who'd wandered off the set of "Janie's Got A Gun" to lens a one hit wonder. This man -- nearly the exact same age as Brad Pitt -- might well be the director of a generation.

And one must forgive the director of a generation for attempting a cookie-cutter Oscar slam-dunk like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I happened to like the film and have little to say about its endless comparisons to Forrest Gump or the questioning of its choice to embed its tale in Katrina. In hindsight, audiences will be far more forgiving and Brad Pitt's legacy with both Fincher and the city of New Orleans will justify that. I needn't do so here.

So it brings us to the "best picture" of 2010. The critic sweeper. The circuit savior. The Globe grabber. The Odds-on Oscar-owner.

Before Jesse Eisenberg made it back to his dormitory we all knew it was a done deal.

Hell, J.R. knew during the ad-campaign before the film was even released.

But all we needed was a Sorkin dump scene -- a trot through the green-hued shadow ridden world of David Fincher -- and a couple of piano key plunks from Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross -- and that was it. Anyone who felt otherwise missed this generational juggernaut when it pulled out of the station -- or was a Harvard grad with an oddly defensive kneejerk reaction.

What can you hold against the film? Is it wrong to "attack" a public figure because he is young (though a legal adult)? Judging by the "60 Minutes" footage I've seen, Jesse Eisenberg wasn't as prickly as Mr. Zuckerberg often seems. And didn't the film make that point clear -- multiple times -- that this was an enormous case of perception becoming reality? And isn't that the most fitting (and obvious) leit motif to bang like a set of bongos in a film about Facebook?

I'm all for hating a front-runner. It's part of what makes America great. Hell, it's a pastime of mine. But I readily admit when I'm doing it. I'd encourage any folks not on The Social Network express to give it another view. It's there, folks. It's bloody stalwart.

No, it is not my favorite picture of the year. I'll get to that when I write about it. No, it is not the film that I think was the best made film of the year. I'll get to that one, too. But this is the winner, plain and simple. It's got winner written all over it and it's a deserving laureate.

What makes me so happy about The Social Network win is that it is finally a best picture by a member of the '90s class of directors -- that group that hailed the '70s as the greatest era in film history -- that followed through with one of the essential ingredients that made '70s films great: YOUNG ACTORS.

Young actors can act. Coppola knows this. Spielberg knows this. Hal Ashby knew it. Scorsese knows it. Woody Allen knows it. And the list goes on.

There are important stories to tell about young people with young people. The only other film to hand the reins over to young actors so completely and take a true run at the '70s windmill was Brokeback Mountain and well... Crash! Nicholson's face said it all on that one.

But we have literally wandered through 30 years of cinema where the same stars from the 70s have anchored nearly every "important" film to come down the pike. I can already see people running at me with Adrien Brody -- did you honestly see that coming? Do you think the fact that he was nominated against four actors from the previous generation (all of whom had Oscars) had nothing to do with it? And what other blow can be thrown? Sean Penn? Daniel Day Lewis? These men aren't young. And say what you will -- even The Departed needed Sheen, Baldwin, and Jack.

So cast the pop star of the generation and let the story roll. You've got a deal. How else would you like to have bank-rolled the movie? Robert Duvall in the role of Sean Parker? Perhaps it could have been the story of the drunk attorney who took the Facebook case and we could follow Russel Crowe home to find out that while his wealthy client was lining his pockets, social networks were making his daughter an "at risk teen." That's how you narratively compromise yourself around youth. It's either that, be a drug addict, or be British. The Social Network refused.

I salute the brave star-less casting of a major generational tale -- beyond the masterful directing, writing, photography, music, editing, and pacing. You can put the boxing gloves down, set your crystal meth aside, hang up your spurs, and blast the Piaf: this is the ensemble of the year.

I'll gladly watch it collect its statuettes that fateful Sunday night. 15 years later, Mr. Se7en has his day.

(It also doesn't hurt that DeLuca will round out the award decade he started pink-slipped for having greenlit The Lord of the Rings with a Rudin-shared golden boy. Huzzah.)

- Matthew J. McCue