A 'Social' Revelation

by Brett Parker

It’s been generally acknowledged that the Facebook era spawned a public escalation in social narcissism, self-importance, defamation, isolation, and pure nonsense. What makes The Social Network so fascinating is its argument that the very creation of Facebook was rooted in the same kinds of troubling traits. It all started with a brilliant college student messing around mischievously on his computer, but that soon spiraled into a trail of fierce ambition, questionable back-stabbing, and egotistical claims that all led to the modern Facebook network as we know it.

The film opens with a young Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) being rejected at a bar by a woman named Erica (Rooney Mara). She has grown so tired of Mark’s ramblings about wanting to be part of the Harvard elite that she thinks he is too egotistical to stomach any further. Mark is so oblivious to Erica’s feelings that he feels the reason he was truly rejected is because he’s an unimportant nerd. This causes him to drunkenly write mean-spirited things about her on his blog from his dorm-room computer. During that same night of blogging, Mark’s anger grows tilted towards all of the women at Harvard and he decides to create a website in which you can rate the hotness of various girls on campus. By hacking into the numerous websites of campus housing, Zuckerberg obtains photos of almost all the campus females and creates his sexist website. The site becomes such an on-campus sensation that it gets over 20,000 hits in two hours, crashing the campus servers.

Zuckerberg’s site not only gets him a slap on the wrist from the disciplinary board, but the attention of the Winklevoss Twins (both played by Armie Hammer, thanks to marvelous CGI tricks). The WASP-Y brothers enlist Zuckerberg to help them with an idea they have for a campus website: they want to create an online social network in which students of Harvard can each have their own individual profile pages containing personal information and photos, allowing the other students to check them out. Zuckerberg considers their ideas and grows one himself: why not make a website in which students everywhere can check out each other’s pages. This site would not only deal with college information, but individual likes, dislikes, and relationship statuses. Thanks to the bankroll of his best friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), Zuckerberg is able to fund and create the social website that would come to be known as Facebook.

Facebook rapidly becomes a giant hit across colleges everywhere and Zuckerberg can barely keep up with its increasing success. Seeking to expand and capitalize as greatly as he can, Zuckerberg and his cohorts end up in the clutches of Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the inventor of Napster. Sean is an out-of-work schemer who quickly seduces Zuckerberg with his charisma and convinces him to move his enterprise to Silicon Valley in California. Eduardo sees Sean as nothing but a leach but Zuckerberg decides to make the move to Silicon Valley as Facebook just keeps growing larger and larger. But big trouble brews for Zuckerberg as major law suits flesh out all around him. Eduardo is eventually forced out of the company by Parker’s conniving strategies and sues for co-ownership of Facebook. Meanwhile, the Winklevoss Twins feel there idea was completely stolen by Zuckerberg and they sue to prove that they were the true inventors of Facebook.

A movie centered around computer programming and lawsuits may not sound like the most exciting picture, but a good filmmaker knows how to make any story feel exciting on the big screen, something David Fincher demonstrates wonderfully here. His masterful camera tricks, along with the rapid-fire heat of Aaron Sorkin’s script, allows the mundane speak of computer talk sparkle with excitement. Like the case theories within Zodiac, Fincher knows how to make speeches of elaborate technical details more compelling than they probably deserve to be. Here Fincher is helped by Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth (who knows how to make low-level campus lights feel unsettling), Editors Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall (who allow us to match up the film’s events with the deposition testimonies superbly), and Score Composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (who elevate a techno-score away from being a gimmick and towards real art) to make this story a dazzling centerpiece that far exceeds a piece of straight-forward investigative journalism.

There has been much speculation regarding the authenticity of The Social Network’s claims. Fincher says it’s a work of fiction while Sorkin claims it’s rather factual. Zuckerberg has disowned the film while the Winklevoss’ claim its an excellent portrayal of what actually happened. It doesn’t really matter how authentic the film’s claims are, for the real triumph is how Fincher captures the undeniable heat and dizziness that went into the website’s creation and the logical motivations that must’ve been lurking beneath. Fincher is a filmmaker who specializes in the bizarre obsessions of peculiar men and the claustrophobic societies that clash with them, allowing Zuckerberg’s story to fit perfectly into Fincher’s aesthetic mold. We sense how Zuckerberg’s creation spilled out grandly into society the way Tyler Durden’s fight clubs did. Zuckerberg’s fierce need to be recognized as a genius is eerily not to far off from John Doe’s delusions of grandeur from Seven. Plus its obvious that Zuckerberg is bottling up wounded emotions the way Benjamin Button’s condition forced him to. The Social Network could’ve been a happy-cheery movie about an optimistic idealist trying to bring young people together, but Fincher wisely realizes that more unsettling masculine ideals generate this story.

Of course the crackling dialogue wouldn’t pop as well without the sensational performances from the film’s young cast. Andrew Garfield is wonderful in showing us a kid who’s sincerity and niceness quickly made him a victim in this cutthroat world. A teary-eyed moment during a lawsuit deposition in which Eduardo reminds Zuckerberg that he was his only friend truly does strike you in the heart. A real livewire performance comes from Justin Timberlake as Parker, who lights up the film like a pinball machine every time he walks on screen. It’s a layered, inspired performance as Parker is both cool but paranoid, smooth yet reckless. Timberlake shines as this devilish operator, owning the screen and having a ball.

The jewel centerpiece of the film lies in Jesse Eisenberg’s performance as the enigmatic Zuckerberg himself. Eisenberg has etched out a place for himself on the silver screen playing ultra-shy nerds coasting their way through social situations. Here he jazzes up his nerd persona to channel one with supreme arrogance and strict determination. Eisenberg has played nervous and repressed for so long that watching him dish out cold cynicism and intellectual cockiness is truly liberating to watch. A tongue-lashing he dishes out towards the Winklevoss Twins and their lawyer is wickedly delicious. Eisenberg can often wear his soul on his sleeve, but here he keeps Zuckerberg curiously sealed-off, with subtle hints of a nerd’s anger and Asperger’s syndrome. It’s through this performance in which Zuckerberg transcends being a historical figure to become a great enigmatic loner of the silver screen. It holds grand promises of major awards to come.

The small yet crucial performance of Erica, may just be the key to the entire film. In the beginning, Zuckerberg creates to spite her, while in the end, he quietly seeks her approval. Perhaps Zuckerberg really did want to change the way people connect with each other, yet Erica’s presence suggests that the creation of Facebook may be rooted in one nerd’s wounded determination to feel accepted, appreciated, relevant, loved. There is no anger or drive that runs deeper than an outcast who feels scorned or unnoticed by the real world. That ends up being the most haunting revelation within The Social Network: the cut-off isolation of a lonely nerd spawned the cut-off isolation of the Internet Age.