THE SOCIAL NETWORK movie review
The Social Network (2010)–***
“As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”
No, Mark Zuckerberg, arrogant millennial billionaire in The Social Network and real-life Facebook co-founder and CEO, didn’t say that. That 20th century technology innovator Bill Gates did. At least that’s what a quick Google search for “Bill Gates +quotes” told me.
You see, we want the people who’ve changed the world to say inspirational things, phrases we can put in a frame and hang on an office wall. We don’t want to see them stammer and sweat their way through an interview.
And if they don’t say anything inspirational? Well, we at least like to believe that these people who say witty and redeemable even when their behavior is beyond the pale, say kicking a best friend to the curb or ending the idea of privacy as we know it. Did Zuckerberg and company deserve such treatment? As the guys who empowered others to become their own entertainment and changed human interaction, yes they did.
That’s why Aaron Sorkin was the only man who could write the screenplay for director David Fincher‘s The Social Network. The story of Facebook’s creation, complete with backstabbing, bathroom sex and blow, needed Sorkin’s words to add grandeur to a tale that could have been told on Page Six (had the old media types only known who these guys were back in 2003.)
Starring Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg, The Social Network weaves Facebook’s rise from a Harvard social network to a worldwide phenomenon in with closed-door lawsuits years after the site launched. The not-quite Rashomon narrative pits Zuckerberg, always the defendant, against his former best friend and CFO Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), as well as some hunky Harvard classmates who created what would be a failed social network, ConnectU.
Sorkin’s screenplay wants us to believe that Zuckerberg created Facebook, directly or indirectly, because of a girl, Erica Albright (Rooney Mara). The film opens with Albright ending their relationship after Zuckerberg’s smarmy self-righteousness invades their conversation, presumably not for the first time. Suddenly single, Zuckerberg takes to laptop for LiveJournal ex-bashing and all-night coding. In the end, he creates a website that allows users to compare female undergrads, kind of like HotOrNot.com, only with friends and classmates.
Sure, Albright might be Zuckerberg’s initial shove into online community development, and in the hands of a different director, I may have even walked out of the film believing it to be true. Fincher, however, takes the story down a perilous track that seems more parody than serious filmmaking.
Sorkin doesn’t write dark drama. Fincher doesn’t do light. The director’s usual cool detachment contrasts with the script even more thanks to Jeff Cronenweth’s cinematography and a score by Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. And while the actors work more from the script than from the direction (something that’s required for Sorkin’s rapid-fire dialogue), we’re sometimes left feeling like we’re watching the movie we knew we would see: A film about whiny billionaires and privileged Harvard kids.
Is The Social Network entertaining? No doubt. The elements themselves work so well that it’s hard not to enjoy the film’s initial momentum or its individual scenes. (Zuckerberg’s tete-a-tetes with lawyers are particularly enjoyable.) But for a film about the social network, there needed to be a connection.
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This looks like the first honest review I’ve read of this film. I read the script and the trailers and clips released up until now all indicate Fincher filmed it just the way it was written and I can not believe it would be that good. For exactly the reasons you mentioned. I also think it’s unfortunate that they rushed this into development and used Mezrich’s ridiculous “fictional” account instead of the much more accurate The Facebook Effect.
One more thing. I do think it’s interesting that you mentioned the Zuckerberg’s “tete-a-tetes with lawyers are particularly enjoyable” because that is the real Mark Zuckerberg. Those lines are straight from the depositions that Sorkin was able to use because they are the public record. It sounds like you enjoyed the real Mark Zuckerberg better than the fake one written by Sorkin.
Is Zuckerbang finally weighing in with the comment above (by “Bill). How can anyone who’s never even seen the film make any judgment about the “honesty” of a particular review of said film. Pathetic, man.
Thanks R. Glad you said it. 🙂 Eisenberg’s Zuck still comes off as completely unlikeable, and despite the best efforts of both Fincher and Sorkin, rather unsympathetic. Maybe I didn’t make that clear. In most cases, you understand why Fincher’s outsider protagonists have a me against the world attitude, seeking a connection with the world around them. You don’t feel that here.
Now Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg in The Game, that would have been fun. (And not out of character.)
I think what is most disappointing is the lesson our young people learn from people like Zuckburg…it’s ok to be a scumbag if you make a billion. And this movie does nothing to bring the truth to light. For instance, he should have been kicked out of school for hacking into the Harvard student database.
He openly sells private, personal information. He steals ideas and sells them as his own. He acts like a spoils child. It take $720 BILLION before his company can make a profit. Let’s make a movie and celebrate this guy.
The movie is almost as rediculous as facebook and Zuckerberg! Will the insanity ever end? Will people ever get a clue? Zuckerberg is laughing at us… all the way to the bank.
Good review, good enough movie. I just wish the movie was more focused about the interaction of facebook and its users more than its creator or its beginning. I don’t need a movie to know that reality. In fact, there’s this Twitter documentary that shows that reality, furthermore, the film will show cause and effect of Twitter and its users.
patrick = sour grape.
If your intellect has any idea about how Silicon Valley works, you would have known the exact same story came out of hotmail.com; countless dot.com bubble millionaires did the same. If people did not care then, no reason to care now.
Thank you for missing Sorkin’s point. Sorkin already pointed out that Facebook is only the backdrop, the topic could have been anything. He admitted it’s basically re-make of a Shakespearean tale for this online generation. That’s why he picked Facebook, not Myspace.