The Social Network (2010)

Yes, David Fincher’s The Social Network is about Facebook. But that’s sort of like saying that Star Wars is about space flight: it’s in there, but it’s not really the meat of the film. The Social Network is a smart, quick-moving look at the creative process and its collateral damage, and the high cost of success and fame. It wouldn’t matter if the bright young men at the film’s center had invented a new light bulb or a coffee maker – how the invention happens and what happens because of it are what matter here.

The film follows Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) in his rise from Harvard sophomore to head of the world’s favorite networking site. It begins not just in the middle of things, but in the middle of a conversation. Zuckerberg is having a talk with his girlfriend in a bar, and the talk goes badly in most ways such a talk can go badly. They break up, and Zuckerberg sulks his way back to his dorm. With a stomach full of beer and a mouthful of sour grapes, he goes online. First he turns to his blog, writing angry slurs about the girl’s family and figure. But the judgmental nature of his posts gives him an idea. Zuckerberg hacks the pictures out of the online “facebooks” of Harvard houses, and, using a formula his best friend uses to rank chess opponents, creates Facemash, a site where men can rank the attractiveness of women. It’s like fantasy football for looks, and in a matter of hours has become so popular with undergraduate males that the web traffic crashes Harvard’s network.

The site earns Zuckerberg the hatred of Harvard’s women, and probation from its administrative board, but it also does what he hoped it would – makes him famous as a hacker. He is soon approached by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both Armie Hammer), alpha-male twins who are star rowers but also have a great idea for an exclusive Harvard networking site (“The Harvard Connection”). They have clout, but no programming skills—but Zuckerberg does. Their idea gives him his own, and Zuckerberg proceeds to stonewall the Winklevosses while developing his own networking site, “The Facebook.” As the twins stew, Zuckerberg talks his friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) into bankrolling the spread of The Facebook – he’ll even bring Saverin onboard as “Chief Financial Officer.” The site, of course, is off like a rocket--so much so that it lands on the radar or erstwhile Napster inventor and professional schmoozer Sean Parker (a delightfully shallow Justin Timberlake), who promises to take Zuckerberg to the big time. Of course, this may mean an upgrade from that old staff of friends and roomies, but so it goes.

That it doesn’t go smoothly is more or less well known. The film is framed by twin depositions in lawsuits Zuckerberg later faced from the angry Winklevoss twins and the resentful Saverin. How much of this is “true?’ Hard to say. The filmmakers didn’t have much contact with the real players, and that’s ultimately to the film’s benefit. This is a story, not a documentary, and Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin focus less on facts than on the effects of the decisions Zuckerberg, et. al. made. The Social Network feels like a cross between a story of creativity ala Shakespeare in Love and a story where a group of guys dreams up a caper that gets them in over their heads (like the first two Guy Ritchie films). The “social network” at issue here is not so much the website as the people who surround it. Of course, one of those “networks” survives while the other dissolves. That friendships are destroyed over a product whose chief activity is “friending” others only adds a helping of delicious irony.

Of course, a story about guys writing code and having conversations isn’t necessarily riveting stuff. Fincher and Sorkin, however, prove to be exactly the team to pull it off. Sorkin has always written well about writers, and Fincher, in Fight Club, famously brought one man’s imaginings to wonderful life. Together with their actors, the two craft a tale that moves at a breakneck pace, maintains interest, and gives you things to think about long afterward. It helps that both take a more direct approach than in times past. Sorkin’s wordy script has all the music and crackle of a fireworks display (when a partner of the Winklevoss twins wants to “hire the Sopranos to beat the s--- out of” Zuckerberg, one of the twins responds, “We can do that ourselves. I’m six-five, 220, and there’s two of me!”). Fortunately, the writer avoids the bombast that has marred some of his later TV outings. Likewise, Fincher—who can do visual tricks and pyrotechnics with the best—tones it way down. The best compliment I can give him is that I didn’t notice the direction, but every shot felt right. The score, by Trent Reznor (yes, that Trent Reznor) and Atticus Ross, provides energy and drive without grabbing too much attention. This is a very well-made film.

It helps that the performers all create well-rounded (let’s avoid “real,” for the obvious reasons) people. We know Eisenberg can do geeky and chatty, and those skills serve him well as the brilliant and argumentative Zuckerberg. But he also brings a coldness to the part, and its to his credit that we’re never sure how much of that chillness is real hard-heartedness, how much is defense mechanism, and how much is the simple indifference of a man who lives mostly in his head. It’s a performance that’s a little pathetic, a little creepy, a little off-putting, and a lot watchable. Garfield’s Saverin is more conventionally likeable – a well-dressed economics major who makes more in stocks than most students make in their summer jobs. The smart partner everyone ignores has been done before, but Garfield makes it clear that it’s Saverin’s morality that is ultimately violated, not his business sense. He’s cheated, yes—but he’s also heartbroken. Timberlake is one of the film’s small joys – his Parker is all surface glitz and buried insecurity. This, too, could have been a cliché character – the “playboy entrepreneur” – but Timberlake lets us see that Parker, though more gregarious, craves acceptance just as much as Zuckerberg. Parker blows more cash, but neither man is really in this for the money. It’s deeper than that. Hammer, with many an assist from a double and camera tricks, is great fun as the Winklevoss twins, and Rooney Mara is a nice breath of common sense as the girl who first calls Zuckerberg on his flaws and starts the face-ball rolling. One would hope she got a cut of the Facebook profits—that is, if she were real.

Much has been made of whether or not this film, with its Machiavellian plotting, will “tarnish” Zuckerberg’s reputation. I doubt it. For one thing, no one associated with the film ever talked to him, so there’s no way this can be an accurate representation. And for another, the knowledge that the creator of a popular product is a jerk rarely diminishes the public’s enthusiasm for either one – just ask Simon Cowell. The Facebook connection makes The Social Network timely. The film’s deeper themes of inspiration, loyalty, betrayal, and the price of fame make it timeless. You don’t have to know or use Facebook to enjoy this movie. It’s simply well-crafted, from start to finish. I suppose it’s a compliment to the film and its subject matter to sum up in Facebook terms: I liked this. I suggest you do, too.