When The Social Network premiered four years ago, it was heralded as the most stylish and relevant movie of our time. Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg epitomized the generational leader of interconnected online users, right down to the blank stares and flip flops. But the film has been upstaged by the next directorial brilliance of Jason Reitman: Men, Women & Children.
The eye of the film critically gazes at everyone dependent upon instant communication and resources. It’s pure anthropology.
What is particularly great is that judgment is just as equally, if not more, passed on the adults as it is on the ones who primarily fuel the technological scene: teenagers.
The perspective alternates candidly between four middle-class white families, as Emma Thompson hilariously narrates in British-accented deadpan. One of the first families introduced belongs to the patriarch Don Truby (Adam Sandler), who uses his own son’s computer to watch porn. Many perceive Sandler to be like the Nicolas Cage of comedies, or an actor in serious need of comeuppance. But for those who have seen Punch Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002) and this film knows that Billy Madison has dramatic chops.
Don and his wife Helen (Rosemarie DeWitt) both find themselves scouring the Internet for varied forms of sex and intimacy. Without giving too much away, the film traverses call-girl encounters and one scene that will have you watching State Farm commercials in an entirely new light.
Their son, Chris (Travis Tope), has his own sexual difficulties. To put it delicately, Chris can’t really get “there” without the dominatrix-type personalities he religiously learned from porn sites.
Watching porn isn’t necessarily the critique, however. It’s the fact of total reliance on technological outlets that produces interpersonal damages.
The same point is executed about single mother Donna Clint (Judy Greer) and her daughter Hannah (Olivia Crocicchia). Donna, without necessarily intending to do so, breeds a girl convinced that a non-virgin reputation and the more “fans” on her modeling website is equivalent to fame. It escalates to the point of calling her mother a “jealous b****.”
Even the other more sympathetic characters demonstrate severe dependency and family dynamics. Jennifer Garner’s character, Patricia Beltmeyer, is a hyper-aware, intense mother who monitors every website and text of her daughter Brandy (Kaitlyn Dever). In one scene where Brandy wants to go out, her mother gently reminds her to take her phone “so I can track you.”
The hazards of technological reliance are answered with the relationship formed between Tim Mooney (Ansel Elgort) and Brandy. Tim avoids the absence of his mother, who left the family behind for another life, and the silence of his father with the virtual reality of his video games. They realize the physical and emotional contact of two humans is more real than what they see occurring around them. But no matter how much progress they make, the presence of texting and social media still remains the very means to their connection.
But the film makes its message clear through the Voyager spacecraft frequently interrupting the human narratives. Part of the Voyager, sent in 1977, contains a solid gold record containing various sounds of the human race—the sound of music, a kiss, nature—for the benefit of any potential extraterrestrial species it finds. Although by fact of its very nature participating in our technological reliance, the satellite is able to look back at Earth from a perspective that throws all our petty troubles and differences into an insanely moot context.
This is emphasized by Tim’s fascination with Carl Sagan’s book Pale Blue Dot. At the film’s end, an entire Sagan segment is reiterated.
The romantic notions that Sagan articulates, vis-à-vis the fluid tonality of Thompson’s voice, only serves to further throw modern life in a negative light. Emojis aren’t powerful. Bland texts aren’t poetic. In short, the way we navigate this world now isn’t going to elevate the human condition.
