Whee, this is awesome and makes total sense. Now that you mention it, it is sort of Mark’s first and only break in that he raises his voice to match the anger he must feel, something that must have been very rare for Eduardo to witness. Whenever Jesse talks about the depositions making Mark feel attacked and angry and insulted, he seems to be mostly talking about the Winklevosses, I’ve noticed? Especially the comments about how Mark feels they’re irrelevant and a waste of time because he knows in his bones that he created Facebook, while Eduardo never disputed that, even backed Mark up on that. I find it telling that he seems just as bored and tired as Mark does as Gage goes through all of those e-mails. They are so completely on the same page in that deposition room before Eduardo leaves, I cannot even.

Which brings us to Mark bursting out with I went to my friend for the money because that’s who I wanted to be partners with/he was also my best friend. We can safely assume the day of the Winklevoss deposition is somewhere between the two Mark and Eduardo have (I’m currently in the middle of two different lawsuits), so by the time the third and last day rolls around, Mark has already had that outburst and having been so staggered by Eduardo’s empty seat and the humiliation of Gage having to remind him he is being sued by his best friend, he doesn’t want to make himself so vulnerable again? :/ He really is uncharacteristically quiet on day three, which is understandable, since that’s where all of the really heavy stuff comes out and it is visibly killing him to have to relive it again through Eduardo’s eyes, almost as if for the first time. I always come back to the way he looks down guiltily after Eduardo says I figured we were partners because ugh, exact mirror of what he said when Eduardo wasn’t there to hear it and needed to be. But really, absolutely, someone in that room needed to say IT WAS NEVER ABOUT THE MONEY. Maybe I’m reading too deep into Andrew’s comments, but I think you’re totally right—Eduardo is waiting for it, is basically cutting himself open and trying to communicate to Mark that he is so not doing this for some stupid numbers on a cheque. I have to make myself feel better about it by imagining some sort of scene the next morning/afternoon/whenever, post-movie, where the settlement happens, and they somehow catch each other alone and Mark says something like well, you won, you got what you wanted, and Eduardo says it was never the money I wanted, and then, you know. WHATEVER YOU WANT TO HAPPEN NEXT. Mark could say it was never about that for him either and Eduardo would be so relieved and try to hide it but he sucks at poker faces and wears his heart on his sleeve and they would smile stupidly at each other but tentatively because they still have a long way to go and I hate this movie for not giving me one little slice of that. JUST ONE. Not a full reconciliation, just—a taste, okay. :( 

No, this is so lovely and perfectly worded, I want to cuddle it! Really, I barely have anything else to add. Andrew is a gift, man, he brought so much extra to Eduardo through pure physicality and I can’t even imagine anybody else playing him. It could have been an entirely different character in someone else’s hands, especially since he seems to subscribe to the Eduardo Loved Mark belief and another actor might not have gone there. THE HORROR.

And what you said, about him leaning close, is so wonderful to me, because in the break-up scene, it’s kind of mirrored. I mean, he doesn’t lean in to sit on his desk, but he is definitely entirely in Mark’s space and I find it so fascinating, that even when he’s pulling away, he’s so close, and even when he walks off, he looks back with his fist in his mouth like he’s doing everything he can not to sob or something even more emotional, and ugh. Andrew acts with his whole body, and so does Jesse, really, but the difference is that Jesse as Mark kind of sucks it all in and tries very hard to stay stoic and it’s those tiny flickers of weakness where he just can’t that reveal everything you need to know. I remember Jesse saying that Mark essentially wears a suit of armour and that the only thing that peeks out of a suit of armour are the eyes, so I find myself watching his eyes a lot, especially in the depositions (and I love that Andrew seems to do the same, given the fact that, like, half of his audio commentary is about Jesse’s eyes and the things they do and communicate. MMHMM.)
 
I really like your train wreck analogy, because yeah, Mark and Eduardo basically are that faulty train, and as onlookers, we can see exactly where everything is broken and what needs to be patched up, how beautiful it could be and how healthily it could run, but we also understand that it can’t be fixed overnight and without any hard work put into it. I think all of their potential to be 100% beautiful lies in the depositions, really, because they’ve finally reached that place of maturity where they can look back and realize they were co-dependent in a way that was unhealthy and destructive, that they assumed the other would know everything without communicating it, and now, in the present, they’re laying it all on the table and actually doing something about it, saying this is where you hurt me and where I hurt you and I want to move on, I want us to be better than that. They needed to be their own people, to have a few years to breathe and reflect, but I personally think they also felt that missing space without the other, that want and need they couldn’t quite shake off, because they knew they could have been happier and that there’s still a lot of time to have that happiness. Whenever I’m feeling really critical of their actions, I remind myself that they were still really young boys when everything blew up, when they said and did the hurtful things they did, not to excuse those things, but to dismiss the idea that there’s no potential for them to be better than those things, because there’s so much room ahead of them to grow. I think they could totally do it; Andrew has pretty much confirmed that he played Eduardo as wanting that more than anything (HE JUST WANTS THEM TO MOVE IN TOGETHER AND CUDDLE), so really, it all kind of rests on Mark and if you think he could be capable of it. I’m an optimist and I see a lot of warmth and longing in him, so I think he could, but I get that everyone views him differently.

Ugh, all of this. EVERYTHING HINGES ON THAT MOMENT, which is why I said Eduardo “almost always” responds, because in the one key bit where he really needed to hear it, he was just somewhere else completely and the timing was terrible but yes, absolutely, that does not at all diminish what a big deal it was for Mark. It was everything Eduardo had been waiting to hear and it sucks that he got a watered down version of it over the phone, because the first time was just so much more raw and guttural, it seemed to literally take the breath out of Mark, his entire body language so tense and fragile and it hurts to watch, seriously. He tried to have that private little—declaration, confession, whatever you want to call it and it blew up in his face, so I understand, a little, why he’s so reserved and guarded, because it seems like every single time he gets over a block and admits exactly what he feels, it’s unheard by the person who needs to hear it more than anyone else. SEE: HE WAS MY BEST FRIEND AND THE EMPTY CHAIR. :(  

One of my few pet peeves with TSN is that some scenes cut away so abruptly to the point where you’re like, um, HOW DID THIS EVEN END, HOW DID THESE PEOPLE WALK AWAY FROM SOMETHING LIKE THAT, and the hallway fight is probably the best example. I know Fincher said in his commentary that he knew going into it that it would end with Eduardo echoing the left behind bit, but there are pictures of wet!Wardo standing by the pool and looking angsty, and I’m sure they must have shot some extra stuff in the hallway itself, since the shoot took seven hours and everything between Jesse and Andrew was apparently so intense and exhausting and the odd BtS clip has shown that they would sometimes slip in the odd little thing that wasn’t scripted but purely physical and instinctual, most notably during the laptop smash. SIGH. Like, there are so many fics dealing with the hallway, but they’re all pretty much of the hate-sex variety and while I will never complain about that in my life, I do wish there were some that just simply had Eduardo listening. OR MAYBE AN ACTUAL FILMED ALTERNATE SCENE. A GIRL CAN DREAM.
 
But yes, Mark, I kind of wish they had shot Eduardo leaving the house and Mark’s reaction to that, because HE HAD JUST GOT HIM BACK AND HE HAD BEEN SO HAPPY and I think the saddest thing about it is that Mark was totally willing to talk and fix it and probably would have if Eduardo hadn’t uncharacteristically fled. Mark instantly repsonding sure to Eduardo wanting to talk alone is probably one of the more seamless and less strained moments they have, from Mark’s end, because he just gives in without a fight and understands that they need that privacy, that he wants that privacy, whereas before I think he might have been a little scared of it. You know, it’s weird to watch the movie back and realize that they’re not actually alone that much, they’re usually surrounded, but they do this thing where they zero in on each other and you get tricked into thinking they’re the only two people in the room, and it’s so bizarre that one of the only times they’re truly by themselves, in this tight little space, so many wires are crossed.

Ah, I get you. Mark’s reply is a bit of a boner killer, of course it is, but Eduardo’s automatic I’m here for you, I think, can still be seen as sweet. It’s how he’s introduced to us, even, so you could argue it’s his defining trait. Like a lot of stuff in this movie, I look at that little bit as something that gradually holds more poignance and significance as the story goes on; Mark basically takes the wrap for both of them at the ad board and singles out what was written on his dorm room window as being all the evidence they needed to find out he was “guilty”, with a lot of cheek and pride, and he gets exactly the kind of nostalgia and man, look how far we’ve come Eduardo is communicaitng when he says remember the algorithm? As a standalone line, I need the algorithm isn’t that big of a deal, but it’s something that becomes sweet in retrospect, because Mark remembered it too, because Mark put value in it too. And as the months pass and the wedge between them grows and they start clinging desperately, we see him stop qualifying his need with objects and instead he just entirely confesses that he needs Eduardo, just Eduardo, that’s it, so—again, yeah, I think that first scene is something that kind of jumps out at you minimally, at first, because it tells you, okay, these guys clearly have a bit of a bump and lack of balance and while Eduardo’s affection is crystal clear to everyone in the room (Dustin giggling and facepalming in the background never stops being funny), you don’t realize until later that Mark has kind of been feeling it all along, too, even if it was subconscious. You could even look at both of the respective shots of Mark and Eduardo losing track of thought and staring out the window during the depositions as remembering the algorithm, if you were so inclined, although I think most of fandom has applied the Mark bit to remembering Eduardo in the rain. That’s the beauty of it, though, that those little ticks could mean anything and everything.