The Kings Speech VS. The Social Network: Which is the Best Picture

In a little less than a month, Hollywood's annual gathering to announce the biggest achievements in film will take place. The Oscars are a chance for our Countries best actors and actresses to come together and celebrate their work, while the rest of the country dreams about being that good looking, having that many friends or being that talented.

Because the Oscars are the last of the major award ceremonies and the ones preceding it award the same categories, there is really no surprise when it comes to who will win and lose on Oscar night. Christian Bale and Natalie Portman are examples of this for this award season. Christian Bale has won Best Supporting Actor honor at every award show that has happened so far (except for the Central Ohio Film Critics Circle Association Awards- but I'm not sure he wanted to win that one anyway), and the same goes for Portman although she won the COFCAA's award. --On a quick side note, the brains behind these COFCAA's picked Inception as the winner of every major category save for acting, leading me to believe that this 'club' is run by a bunch of fanboys and not individuals who have knowledge of what is actually cinematic achievement.--

Are you not entertained?

Let me get back on track. The Oscars, in many ways, are fake. A good number of the nominees knew they were going to win their respective category several weeks ago; of course Bale and Portman are going to win, Aaron Sorkin has been golden since October. Firth has best actor locked up, and best supporting actress doesn't really matter (they announce it first, come on). David Fincher is putting together his thank you list, just as the rest of his technical cast are putting together their's.

'So if we already know all the winners, what is the point of even watching?' Valid question, and in fact unless you know someone there, are into cinema or subscribe to People, Star and the other starlet magazines, you probably won't watch. The Oscars move too slowly. 4 hours of coverage, musical acts, boring speeches- I would rather listen to my Ipod at the DMV.

People watch the Oscars to be entertained, and surprised. The same reason they go to see all these performers in the movie theatre. In fact, the reason I am going to watch the Oscars this year is to see which great film will be forever labelled, the best of 2010. I have seen all the contenders, all great films in their own right, but I believe it has become a two horse rase between The Social Nework and The King's Speech, and with the possible addition of True Grit, these are the best films that I have seen this year.

A few weeks ago I would have said that The Social Network would win Best Picture with no hesitation, however after re-watching both films my opinion is different. I have decided to briefly review each one here, however, before coming to my final decision. Social Network will be written in blue, King's Speech in red:

"You're an asshole, but you'll be rich so its justified."

The suspenseful telling of how Facebook came into existence, The Social Network proves that not all great films are built from the same mold. Aaron Sorkin creates a romantic, stylised version of the life of Mark Zuckerburg, reigning Time Man of the Year. His characterization is peculiar, as our protagonist is, at least on the exterior, not a likeable guy. However he takes this mathematically inclined dickhead, and humanizes him by showing (however incorrect) that he creates Facebook to cope with his girlfriend dumping him. This Zuckerberg character was by far the most interesting character on screen in 2010 and much credit must be given to Jesse Eisenberg for that. The film in many ways is a showcase for director, David Fincher, and he proves that he is not just a one trick pony- but that he can actually direct a romantic drama. Despite all the positives, the film does have weaknesses. It seems overdone, as if they took a story about a historic occasion and glossed it up to make it more interesting that it was, or ever could have been-- Am I supposed to believe that busses full of attractive girls roll up to Harvard parties just so they can get with some dudes who may make it big, but just as easily fall on their face? The overzealous attempt to dramitize and stylize the life of a man painted in such a negative way doesn't impress me, in fact it makes me wonder if enough time was spent working on the script as went into making the film. Being a college student, it made me wonder if Aaron Sorkin did any work studying to write a script like this, or if he liberally copied and pasted from the book the film was based off. The Social Network was definitely one of the best films of the year, and one I would recommend to anybody, but I don't think this is a film I would ever see again.


Period pieces are always the hardest to assemble, authenticate and execute in TV or film, therefore when an attempt is done right much is made over the success. The King's Speech succeeds where The Social Network fails, with its authentic feel and realistic points of dialogue and setting. Speech is a prototypical feel good Christmas time family film, but it goes so much further than that, delving into the personal relationships that the characters shared. It is a film that does nothing special, in fact it is cliched (just another word for eternal truth), and predictable, but there is something about it that makes you emotional at the end. The reason for this is quite simple, the performance of the films 3 lead actors. Colin Firth gives the best performance of the year as Prince Albert/ George VI, spending every moment on screen struggling to overcome his stutter and unable to form flowing/ coherent sentences. Featuring a dedication to his role that all young actors can learn a thing from. The other notable performance was from Geoffery Rush playing Firth's speech therapist, and the antagonist. He is wonderful and has some of the film's best pieces of dialogue, but his character becomes less inspired by the end of the film leaving him as a cookie cutter character- utilized only to half heartedly push the film towards climax. Including the first two, this film is almost like a 'whose who' of British actors. Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce, and Dumbledore, and this collective talent helps bring this script to life- catapulting a run of the mill story into Oscar contention (and probable winner). 


There it is, my quick and dirty spiels about the films that have a chance to win Best Picture. What I look at to be the determing factor in which will win, is the lasting impact of each of the films. I think that the Academy made a mistake last year with its winner (The Hurt Locker) because this was a film with very little social impact, that next to no one had seen until several weeks before the ceremony. It was a contemporary war story that could have been told much better had it been a documentary rather than a movie, and for Katherine Bigalow to throw around a pro-military stance in her acceptance speech was complete horseshit. She obviously did not realize what she was doing was a work of fiction, not a realistic, gritty portrayal of bomb techs in Iraq. If anything this film takes advantage of America's growing dissatisfaction with war and the average cinema goers idiocy, making no statement in the film for, or against war- instead using explosions and the usage of the word 'fuck' to catch the publics attention. If the Academy is supposed to pick a film that "represents the best directing, acting and writing efforts put forth for a film," last years winner was clearly Inglourious Basterds. And therefore going by those standards I believe that, this year, the film that most deserves to win Best Picture is The King's Speech, because it champions all three. And even though The Social Network is the most influential film of the year, rarely, if ever, does the Academy reward those films. Look at: Avatar (2009), Brokeback Mountain (2005), The Sixth Sense (1999), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Apollo 13 (1995), The Shawshank Redemption & Pulp Fiction (1994)... and these are just the films that have been slighted since I have been alive. Also a big factor in determing the winner will be the timeframe in which each of these movies were released; Network in October, and Speech in December and continuing to make money at the box office- potentially up until Oscar night. In what I think will be one of the closest Oscar decisions in recent years, the Academy will get it right and award The Best Picture of 2010 to The King's Speech.