The Social Network Reviews (2010)

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Mark Zuckerberg is an asshole. Or, at least, the movie version of him is. I'll confess to knowing precious little about the boy-wonder billionaire who founded Facebook, but if he's even a quarter of the asshole he's made out to be in The Social Network, the dramatic film adaptation of The Accidental Billionaires, Ben Mezrich's book about Zuckerberg and the primordial days of the social networking behemoth, then a spectacular, sardonic, stupefying asshole he most certainly is. That said, as crafted by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher, and portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg, he is also as intriguing, provoking, and mesmerizing a character as I've seen in recent memory.

Though it's largely been billed by people as "The Facebook Movie," The Social Network is, for all intents and purposes, the Mark Zuckerberg story. Facebook itself is practically a MacGuffin in the film, a billion dollar concept that people spend a great deal of time discussing and fretting about, but is only periodically used or shown in the film. Instead, what we have here is a fascinating character study of a dot com prodigy and supreme dickhead that more or less bulldozes his way to success through razor sharp wit, zero filter, and an uncanny ability for computer programming. 
 
When we meet Zuckerberg, he's an undergrad at Harvard in 2003. The movie's opening salvo finds him and his then girlfriend ( Rooney Mara) engaging in the kind of rat-a-tat dialogue that is unmistakably Sorkin, but also feels like the kind of conversation you could easily see two people engaged in, when one involved perhaps suffers from a mild case of Asperger's. Zuckerberg is relentless in his self-absorbed diatribe about his desire to impress the exclusive clubs on campus, his desire to win their approval and find a better life. Mara, for her part, tries to be understanding and engage the topic like a normal human being, but it is clear from the get-go that Zuckerberg is anything but normal, and after one too many accidentally insulting comments, she dumps him.

The movie purports that this rejection is what brought Zuckerberg to the path that eventually brought about Facebook. After a vaguely psychotic blogging session in which he throws more than his share of god awful comments at the girl, Zuckerberg stumbles onto the idea of a site called "FaceMash," where Harvard students can compare pictures of female students stolen from the various "facebooks" of Harvard's dorms, judging which is hotter. The idea (and the computer hackery involved in executing it) gets him in hot water with the school, but also attracts the attention of some young entrepreneurs, who come to him with the idea of building a site that would effectively be an exclusively Harvard version of Myspace or Friendster. Why? Because chicks dig guys with a Harvard email address.

Zuckerberg agrees to work on their site, but then almost immediately throws it by the wayside in favor of a bigger idea, one that takes their original concept and expands it into a true social network. He taps his business major best friend Eduardo ( Andrew Garfield) for a bit of start-up cash, and after an epic programming bender, TheFacebook is born.

What follows is a rollercoaster ride through the last seven years of the Internet, the rise of social networking, and the legal battles than surrounded one of the biggest Web sites in the world. Sorkin's script and Fincher's direction combine into something truly special here. This is a movie that manages to take some fairly impenetrable concepts, such as intellectual property law, computer programming, and venture capitalism, and wraps them up with characters and scenes that are damn near impossible to detach yourself from. Sorkin, who has always had a knack for crafting dialogue with catchy, hypnotic rhythms and biting humor, is on fire here. Every conversation is blistering and funny in tone, yet, again, feels natural and believable for these characters and these situations. The film's pace is nearly perfect, spending just enough time on the formative years of the site and the relationships it spawned from before blasting these characters into the world of dot com success and excess. You know from the get-go that Zuckerberg and Eduardo will be on the outs by the end of it all, as the movie intercuts between the linear story and scenes from his dual litigation with the aforementioned Harvard students, as well as with Eduardo.

The relationship between Eduardo and Zuckerberg is a fascinating one, not just because of the dynamic between the two partners, but also because the real Eduardo was Mezrich's sole source for the book's story, lending a good bit of credence to the notion that perhaps this all might not be entirely true. The real Zuckerberg has actively dismissed the story as complete fiction, save for some specific details that are a matter of public record. That said, the truthfulness of The Social Network isn't really important here. Whether or not Zuckerberg said all these things or did all these things precisely this way is beside the point. The movie is simply a brilliant encapsulation of a cultural phenomenon, and more to the point, a brilliant examination of a unique personality. I don't care if this is the real Mark Zuckerberg, because this Mark Zuckerberg is so eminently fascinating to watch.

Credit to Jesse Eisenberg, who I will be the first to admit I have, in the past, written off as just being Michael Cera-lite. If ever there were a star-making performance this year, Eisenberg's turn here as Zuckerberg is it. He captures Sorkin's dialogue rhythms with an almost preternatural precision, and his ability to simultaneously unnerve and amuse you with each scathing word is pretty unreal. At the same time, there are these subtle blank stares, these twitchy, off-kilter characteristics that show so much of how this guy thinks and operates without saying anything at all. It's simply a tremendous performance.

The rest of the cast deserves its praise, too. Garfield as Eduardo shows a significant range of emotion as he simultaneously succeeds and suffers alongside Zuckerberg's whims, and the tragedy of their relationship is played wonderfully by the two of them. Also, who'da thunk that Justin Timberlake would walk in and almost steal the show? Timberlake plays Sean Parker, the former Napster founder and Silicon Valley vagabond who helped turn the fledgling Facebook business into a bona fide monetization machine, albeit with a bit of a rock star attitude and a penchant for banging interns. Timberlake plays Parker like a straight up snake oil salesman, a couch-crashing huckster with connections up the ass, and an equal amount of paranoia and persecution complex. Once Timberlake enters the picture and opens his mouth, it's easy to see how Zuckerberg became enraptured with what the man had to say, and what he brought to the table.

I feel like between all the talk of the performances and Sorkin's script, I haven't said much about David Fincher here. It's interesting, because The Social Network feels perhaps the least like a David Fincher movie of all of his catalog. Were it not for the tonally perfect Trent Reznor soundtrack (reminiscent of the tonally perfect Dust Brothers soundtrack he employed in Fight Club), and the distinctly Fincher-esque lighting and color palette, you might not even sense his presence. I actually rather appreciated that about the movie. There are a lot of neat stylistic touches to it, but nothing that screams one specific filmmaker. The movie feels broader than that, easier to approach and engage. I didn't spend much time thinking about who made this movie, so much as I did engrossed in the story it was telling me. That's never a bad thing.

While I hesitate to call The Social Network the "generation-defining" picture that some are making it out to be, I can certainly see why someone would say that. The movie has an extensive knowledge and understanding of this particular swath of the Internet generation, the generation that started the social networking trend and turned the Internet into the social feeding frenzy it is today. That it portrays Zuckerberg as such a flawed, borderline personality is a fact ultimately dwarfed by what the movie gives him credit for. This is the man who invented Facebook, and this story of how he did it, be it real, imagined, or a bit of both, is as funny, sad, tragic, and remarkable a story as you'll see in theaters this year.