The Social Network

Rating: Null/10 (17 October 2010)

One of the most prominent criticisms of The Social Network is that it is a complete dramatization, and isn't even close to what happened in real life. The reason for this is that what happened in real life was completely boring. Mark Zuckerburg and his friends were just a bunch of computer geeks sitting around a computer in their room writing line after line of computer code. If a movie accurately portrayed hacking in real life, it would be one of the most boring movies ever made. So, of course this movie is a complete dramatization. You don't go to the movies and expect it to be completely based off of fact.
The Social Network was a well written movie that takes the boring tale of the creation of facebook, and the drama that ensued, and turns it into a full-blown captivating story that will keep your attention throughout the entire length of the movie. It is based off of a book written by Ben Mezrich, a Harvard Magna Cum Laudi graduate. Which is probably the reason why it is such a thrilling script. I have never read the book, but the movie did a good job of following a storyline, even with so much to cover. The two lawsuits that the main plot of the story is based around makes a very good baseline, in which everything that the movie talks about ties back to. This keeps the movie on task, never trekking too far off topic, yet keeping the scenes flowing easily from one to the next.
My one complaint is that the movie was fairly over-dramatic. Every scene in the movie was either some really flashy, over-the-top, party scene, some stupid teenage stunt scene, or a scene in which people were consistently whining at each other. At a certain point in the movie, I just wanted everybody to get over their hormonal crying and do something. Punch someone! Sue them! Don't just sit there and complain about it. However, I am probably biased on this issue, as I am not a fan of useless and incompetent drama, which was what this movie was all about. If you are a fan of such drama, then you will probably enjoy The Social Network that much more.
The director of this movie was David Fincher. I want to briefly mention this, because Fincher has directed a couple of fairly decent movies in the past, such as Fight Club and Se7en. He continues his trend of decent movie making in this movie. However, the writing and story are what make this movie, Fincher only adds to the decency of the movie.
I am even less focused on the acting in any movie. Actors are just the face of a movie, they aren't what make it a good movie. Anyone, given enough makeup, practice, and enough times in front of the camera, can act well. It takes some amount of intelligence to write, direct, or even know when to invest in a good movie. If you have terrible actors, but good directing and writing, you can end up with a well thought out movie. Nonetheless, if you must have my opinion on the acting of this film, I guess they did a good job as well. The characters did seem to line up well with their actors.
There is one very important topic I do want to discuss. While watching this movie, I started to realize that it was created in such a way that it was impartial towards the characters. There were no blatant "bad" or "good" guys. It was just people doing what they do, and then suffering the consequences of their actions.
Is this a good thing? Should media be neutral? Well, may be. It depends on what the type of media is trying to do. Arguing a strict point can hinder intellectual pondering of the moral. If a movie portrays that this man is good and that man is bad, then you aren't going to think about why what this man is good or why that man is bad, because it's fairly obvious. You might question the legitimacy of the movie's claim, but if you're going to do that, then you probably already do that with most media, or at least the media that doesn't measure up to your personal political or moral beliefs. Most people will just watch and accept. So this is the way people use if the creator is trying to impose a strict moral through their medium. However, this can also alienate certain populations from enjoying certain movies. It is hard to like a movie when you don't agree with what it is trying to tell you. Machete would have been an awesome (note that I said awesome not good) movie if it wasn't so politically involved. On the other hand, if a movie is neutral, then it can be hard to portray any sort of meaning. Although, I don't find this to be an entirely bad thing. Like ancient Grecian or Shakespearian tragic plays, a person has to think about why Creon ended his life with nothing, or why Macbeth had it all and then lost it. I like to sit down to a movie and then leave thinking about what I just watched and why it ended the way it did, not just blindly accept that this person was right and that person was wrong.
Well, back to the movie. Should you go and see The Social Network? I say yes. It might not be the best movie of the year, but it was a well written, well developed movie. Even if you hate drama, don't have a facebook, or even know who Sean Parker is, you should still see this movie.