Movie Review: The Social Network

The Social Network (2010)

Directed by David Fincher

Written by Aaron Sorkin

Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer, Justin Timberlake, Rooney Mara

Releease Date October 1st, 2010 

Published September 30t, 2010

For the past five years Facebook has been rising through our culture and becoming a phenomenon. It's a phenomenon that does not merely exist on its own but captures the rise to predominance of online culture vs. all other forms of discourse. Lives are lived online as much as they are in real life in many cases and much of those lives date back to one night when one 20-year-old college kid had a few beers and banged out the computer code that would cause a social networking revolution.

David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin's "The Social Network" is the mostly true story of Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), the purported founder of Facebook. There is some question as to whether Mark, now the world's youngest billionaire at 26 years old, actually came up with the idea or if he stole it, adapted it and reaped the rewards. The film takes its shape from depositions in two different lawsuits filed against Zuckerberg by friends and attempted colleagues.

Writer Ben Mezrich used the depositions as well as numerous interviews and investigative reporting as the basis for his sensational book "The Accidental Billionaires" which comes to thrilling and enthralling life onscreen as "The Social Network." Under the expert direction of David Fincher and the whip crack, witty dialogue of writer Aaron Sorkin, the founding of one website and the personalities behind it becomes a dialogue about the modern internet culture and a commentary on the direction of society.

Flashbacks begin and end in "The Social Network" with crash cuts to Mark Zuckerberg sitting in an entirely irritated state in a lawyer's office. Eduardo Severin (Andrew Garfield), Zuckerberg's former best friend and the man who put up the money to start Facebook and Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (Armie Hammer, in a remarkably non-showy, dual role) are suing Zuckerberg over Facebook but for very different reasons.

Forget the merits of either suit, it's clear Severin had a real beef while the Winklevoss's and their partner Divya Narenda were grasping at straws having simply a generic idea that they asked Zuckerberg to code for them and failed to administer on their own, the lawsuits are merely the ordering device. The meat of "The Social Network" is in the extraordinary casting, acting and writing as well as David Fincher's remarkable talent for setting a scene. 

Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg as a social illiterate who sees other people as a means to an end. We see at the start of the film a fictional account of Mark on a date with a girl played by Rooney Mara. It's evident to us, if not immediately to her, that Mark has no real interest in her beyond the physical need to be a normal 20 something male being seen in public with an attractive woman. Mara's character is a device but a terrific one; the date establishes who Mark is, his motivations and desires and the scene is filled with smart, fast paced, witty dialogue that gets the movie off to a running start.

Eisenberg owns the screen in this opening scene; his words fly like Edward Norton's fists in "Fight Club" and are occasionally as devastating. David Fincher's "Fight Club" was an indictment of consumer and pop culture disposability and "The Social Network" picks up where "Fight Club" left off by cutting the computer chord that binds the audience to Facebook and showing us the true face of social media, the good the bad and the ugly.

Opposite Eisenberg is Andrew Garfield as the much maligned and abused Facebook co-founder and CFO Eduardo Saverin. Eduardo is the genius and sap who made several hundred thousand dollars as a very young man, pledged some of that money to Mark Zuckerberg and watched his supposed friend attempt to jettison him from the company they founded together. Through Garfield's fierce yet sensitive performance we see how Saverin was seduced, betrayed and bewildered by Zuckerberg and the fast paced, wired world of Facebook.

Justin Timberlake is a lightning bolt of humor and charisma as Sean Parker, the former Napster founder who dazzled Zuckerberg by being the social butterfly Zuckerberg could never be but envied deeply. Parker is the high side of Internet culture, the freewheeling good times, the connections that work out and the potential for trouble that can arise from making connections with people you don't know. He is the polar opposite to Andrew Garfield's Saverin, whose story is another more truthful metaphor for the online experience of attempting to connect with friends and strangers in an online wasteland of forgettable status updates.

Facebook and the culture of social networking are by nature, not important. It brings little to nothing of value to the world. It is the intangible equivalent to candy. It's sweet and tasty or it can be souring, even disgusting. It can brighten your day or make you sick but in the end, Facebook, MySpace and the rest have no value beyond the metaphorical sugar high of faux connectedness.

The strength of "The Social Network" as crafted by David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin lies in recognizing the emptiness of the Facebook world and using the real life creators and their stories as a means of exposing the emptiness. Vapid status updates, perfunctory friend requests and questionable relationship statuses are the heart of Facebook and through the characters of "The Social Network" the stark reality of social networking becomes resonant, jarring messages for audiences merely expecting the sex, drugs and computer coding behind the pop phenomena of Facebook.

In "Fight Club" Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter watched the world fall apart around them as they held hands and connected truly for the first time. Facebook and the world of social networking comes crashing down in "The Social Network" and the witnesses are us, the audience, many of whom have spent far too much time taking Facebook far too seriously.