REVIEW:
The Social Network
Fincher's Facebook movie proves surprisingly significant
release date: September 10, 2010
our rating: 90%
reviewer: Aaron Schrank
Rarely does a film emerge that captures the attention of the universal popcorn-gobbling audience and actually manages to possess weighty cerebral and emotional value. The heavily- hyped The Social Networkdelivers on every level, with complex characters, witty dialogue and a narrative as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. Before its release, the film chronicling the legal confrontations behind everyone’s favorite social networking website wreaked of “movie-of-the-week”. The trailer certainly failed to convey any of the possible merits of the film, assembling all of its most uncharacteristically melodramatized snippets into a few minutes and playing a women’s choir cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” in the background. With all of that equation-scribbling, the ivy-league establishing shot and the “This is our time!” announcement from Justin Timberlake’s character, it seemed likely that the film would be on par with those movies where an eclectic gang of young adults steal the SAT answers or put their ivy-league education to work counting cards in Vegas. Fincher’s final product proves itself in a vastly different league than anticipated, with direction, a script and performances that fit together to present a near perfect treatment of the Zuckerberg saga and Facebook origin myth. The result is an unbelievably rich, pure and engaging based-on-truth account that will entertain and challenge viewers of ages, whether or not they care about Facebook.
“You're going to be successful, and rich. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole.” This break-up line used by Mark Zuckerberg’s gorgeous girlfriend in the film’s opening scene provides the initial framework within which the Zuckerberg character develops. The now-billionaire Facebook founder is played by Jesse Eisenberg, a young actor who gave a memorable performance in 2005’s The Squid and The Whale and has appeared recently in roles probably intended for Michael Cera in films like Adventureland and Zombieland. Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg is one of the most complex and fascinating characters seen on the screen in recent years, and its Eisenberg’s performance that transforms Mark Zuckerberg into the internet-era Charles Foster Kane. The scowl-faced Eisenberg, touting a quick wit and dry sense of humor, perpetuates Zuckerberg’s antihero status, performing a careful balancing act to ensure his character’s fluctuating likability throughout the film. In the closing scene, at the site of the legal deposition where Zuckerberg is being sued (in two separate cases) for more dollars than Facebook has members, a young female lawyer provides a final conclusion on the Zuckerberg character the audience has been scrutinizing since his introduction: “You’re not an asshole, Mark. You’re just trying so hard to be.” As most of the characters who encounter Zuckerberg in the film do, viewers will find themselves fixated on determining the motivations, joys and disturbances of this character. Eisenberg’s performance (as well as Sorkin’s script and other aspects of the film) are generating a fair amount of Oscar buzz for a film of this sort, if that matters.
David Fincher is probably the only director who could have turned this dot-com docu-drama into a dark and stylish piece of art, oozing with cool. Fincher has wowed the Facebook generation with films likeSe7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. He makes the could-be conventional rise of Facebook storyline work by intercutting scenes of Zuckerberg founding of Facebook beginning in 2004 with scenes of an unmoved Zuckerberg battling with plaintiffs Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins four years later. Fincher’s spotless attention-to-detail serves the story well, as it did in 2007’s carefully-researched (and unfortunately overlooked) Zodiac. The unruffled razor-sharp tone of the film is aided by industrial rocker turned score composer Trent Reznor’s soundtrack. With Reznor’s score and Fincher’s direction, scenes of hacking and code-writing become thrilling action sequences. Perhaps the majority of the credit for The SocialNetwork’s success should be awarded to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who adapted his screenplay from Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires. Sorkin, who has proven himself a wordsmith when it comes to fast-paced and potent dialogue in TV’s The West Wing and a number of films, including A Few Good Men, wastes not a single word in The Social Network’s finely honed script. It is Sorkin’s understanding of subtlety and character that transport the viewer into the competitive social atmosphere of Harvard University, the opportunity-rich software buzz of Palo Alto, California and the semi-fictional mind of one of the most mesmerizing characters in recent film history.
While an average viewer will probably agree that Eisenberg is well-cast as Mark Zuckerberg, they might be surprised to realize just how well-cast the entire film is, at least in terms of physical appearance alone. Caricatured representations of real individuals are common in film, but a quick Google search will reveal that The Social Network’s depiction(s) of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both played by Armie Hammer) are no more outrageous than the real-life identical Olympians. Andrew Garfield’s Eduardo Saverin and Max Minghella’s Divya Narendra closely resemble their real-life counterparts. Even the Larry Summers character (played by Douglas Urbanski) looks strikingly similar to the real economist and former Harvard president. Perhaps the hardest casting decision pill to swallow is that of pop-crossover Justin Timberlake as Napster founder Sean Parker. The idea of Timberlake acting in a David Fincher film doesn’t sound all that great on paper, but the decision proves its legitimacy on-screen. A love-to-hate star like Timberlake slides duly into the role of an ostentatious dot-com “rock star” whose reputation for scandal rivals his legitimacy as a pioneering businessman.
It matters little that the real Mark Zuckerberg recently dubbed The Social Network a work of fiction. An average viewer could assess that Fincher and Sorkin’s depiction of the old-world social structure at the academically-elite Harvard University is exaggerated to assist the narrative. The fixation on finals clubs serves as a helpful basis for (and comparison to) the elements of exclusivity and networking built in to the Facebook program. Elements of the story certainly had to be dramatized, but the triumph of the film is the fact that it managed to avoid oversimplified traditional structures of hero and villain, right and wrong. While most viewers will admire some aspects of Zuckerberg’s haughtiness and quick-wit, the film leaves it up to the viewer as to who is right and who is wrong. Eduardo and Zuckerberg sit across the table from each other at the deposition, hashing out the details of the disintegration of their personal and professional relationship with 600-million dollars at stake, and the viewer really doesn’t know which character to feel sorrier for. Maybe The Social Network’s Zuckerberg is a bold trendsetter who is too smart for his own good, or maybe he’s a bitter crook that will do anything to get attention. It’s all open for discussion, and that’s why this film works so well. As most Facebook users will soon learn via newsfeed: “that Facebook movie” is worth watching.
This is expensive, but seeing this well-spoken indie-pop group (a Broken Social Scene side-project) will be well worth it for those who have money to spare.Check out "The Night Starts Here"
