David Fincher Director Profile

This is the fifth entry in my Director Profile series.

ABOUT DAVID FINCHER

The buzz for The Social Network is now reaching deafening levels, with the few early reviews not only being positive, but full-on raves. Peter Travers has not published a full review yet, but he has tweeted about it being a defining movie of the decade. Ah, the power of 140 characters or less. To prepare, I have decided to write a director profile on David Fincher, the director of The Social Network, and one of the best going right now. On top of that, I feel we’re about to enter the peak of his career.

David Fincher started working lower positions on various movie sets, eventually able to work his way up until he directed commercials, music videos, and eventually motion pictures. His most well-known music video work was with the likes of Madonna and Paula Abdul, and eventually he made his feature debut with Alien 3. I haven’t seen it, but the consensus is that it’s less than average, though Fincher is said to show a certain visual flair even with dire material. His career didn’t explode, however, until Se7en, and that is where we begin.

THE FILMS

Se7en (1995)

A dark, unflinching film that is my second favorite serial killer film behind Fincher’s own Zodiac, which we will talk about a bit later. Make no mistakes, Se7en is constantly morbid and paints as bleak a picture of our modern society this side of every Coen Brothers movie. The plot follows Detectives Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and Mills (Brad Pitt) as they investigate a series of connected murders based on the seven deadly sins. Freeman is great and is the soul of this movie as the old man who has just about had enough of the dismal world around him. Nothing surprises him anymore, but it’s enough to tear a man apart, Lisa. Unlike later films of its ilk, Se7en is not filled with pure nihilism, but instead shows us all of the horror with a humanity that has been unmatched. Fincher is able to create an almost nonstop sense of dread, and his unique style comes through quickly and furiously. Many people debate the ending, which is a punch in the gut, but it is memorably impactful. It’s not a pleasant film, but it’s a great one.
(Rating: 4/4)

The Game (1997)

This one, for one reason or another, doesn’t quite click with me. Fincher injects it with a great style and sense of foreboding, but the stakes are never high enough to care. Michael Douglas plays a Gordon Gekko wannabe who is forced to go through a specialized “game” as part of a birthday gift from his brother. Essentially an overlong episode of The Twilight Zone, Fincher does his job well enough, and you always feel like you are being watched by a faceless organization, but Douglas isn’t anything special here. Fincher is best with more complex, ambiguous material, but The Game is straightforward to a fault. Does anyone REALLY care what happens to Douglas’ character here? I didn’t whatsoever. It’s great to look at, but ultimately an unimportant and disengaging experience.
(Rating: 2/4)

Fight Club (1999)

Fight Club is one of those films that can mean a million different things to a million different people, and on top of that about a third of them (if not more) would probably hate it. To some, it cuts to the very bone of being a man in the modern world, to others it misinterprets that very idea, and to others it’s about a bunch of guys who punch the crap out of each other. It’s a satire, it’s an action movie, and it’s perhaps the most DISTINCTIVE film of Fincher’s career, if not his best. It follows one man (Edward Norton) and his endless frustration with the apparent emasculation he faces on a daily basis. He can’t sleep, that is until he attends various support groups for diseases he doesn’t have, and from there the plot moves a mile a minute. Eventually he meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a confident man that the narrator looks upon with envy. Eventually he and Tyler start a fight club, but eventually it becomes bigger than all of them. Not only is Fight Club a great “State of the Union” for the modern man, but it speaks to the very culture we live in. It takes our inner desires and lets them run rampant, and Fincher is the brilliant madman at the controls.
(Rating: 4/4)

Panic Room (2002)

After the soaring ambitions of Fight Club, Fincher tones waaaaaay down with Panic Room, a modest but quite effective thriller the likes of which we should have more of. Essentially this: Meg (Jodie Foster) and her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart, already pouting) move into a new house. A group of robbers break in, and Meg and Sarah are forced to hide in their impenetrable panic room. Here’s the catch: what the robbers want is in the room. Let the cat-and-mouse game begin! Expertly filmed by Fincher with his usual visual flair, Panic Room delivers some pretty great thrills en route to an expected ending that still packs a decent emotional punch. Meg and Sarah’s claustrophobia becomes ours, and we feel every moment slip away. Panic Room never cheats and as such is a memorable thriller that a lot of people could learn from. Sometimes, it doesn’t take much to get the job done.
(Rating: 3/4)

Zodiac (2007)

(This will be a little short, because I have already written on Zodiac HERE.)
David Fincher’s best film is also one of the best films of the 2000’s, and perhaps the best police procedural I’ve seen. It’s a vivid look at obsession and paranoia in the age of the Zodiac killer in San Francisco. It’s not incredibly violent, but it’s haunting, and knows its characters and how the Zodiac affects them personally. The script, by James Vanderbilt, is Sorkinesque in its attention to minute detail, verisimilitude and humor, and as such this is the film that I think got Fincher the job for The Social Network. Where the 90’s was more violent for Fincher, the new millennium finds him more reserved, and he does each brilliantly.
(Rating: 4/4)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

Here is a film that isn’t bad, but not nearly as good as it thinks it is, and as such I never really connected to it at all. The premise is interesting enough: a man is born old and ages backwards. The idea, I think, was to portray him living as normal a life as possible, and thus giving us a Synecdoche, New York-esque study of how we live our lives. It never comes close to that, and it lumbers on without much direction. A lot happens in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but nothing is said. The film is saved by Fincher, who creates the world and Benjamin himself brilliantly. The look is very much that of Fincher, but it’s the material that doesn’t quite gel. Like The Game, it doesn’t give Fincher the meat that he likes to work with, but just gives him a flashy bone. The whole time the film is CONVINCED it’s being profound, at that is what annoyed me most. It tries to be Forrest Gump for a new millennium, but at least that film was fun where this one was somber.
(Rating: 2.5/4)

CAREER GRADE: A-

Here is a case that my ratings alone might indicate a slightly lower grade, but the sheer brilliance of his best films (Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac) far outweighs my reservations about the rest (The Game, Benjamin Button). Now, we look ahead to The Social Network which opens on October 1st, and if the hype is any indication this will be pretty amazing, and maybe one of his best. Either way, he has an incredibly body of work up until this point, and even the films I’m not crazy about are beloved by others. After The Social Network the next Fincher film will be the American version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara. I believe that he, like Christopher Nolan, is just now entering the prime of his career, and we have just as much to look forward to as we have to look back on.

Other Director Profiles
Christopher Nolan
M. Night Shyamalan
Quentin Tarantino
Oliver Stone (partial)