Fincher Doing Facebook? He Makes It Work

Rating: Null/10 (11 January 2011)

Social Network, The (2010)
**** (out of 4)
Terrific look at Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), the man who would become the youngest billionaire due to him coming up with the idea for Facebook. The film follows the creation of the website all the way up to the litigation's of two lawsuits from people claiming Zuckerberg either ripped off their idea or ripped them from money rightfully belonging to them. I'll admit that I'm not on Facebook and I knew very little of its "history" when going into the film. I'll also admit that I found it strange when I first heard someone like Fincher would be doing a movie about a website but after viewing THE SOCIAL NETWORK is becomes so clear why the director would be interested in the material: Zuckerberg is a terrific scumbag and one brilliant villain. Perhaps not knowing the story of the people involved helped but I believe even if you do know the story then you'll still be blown away by this movie simply because of how masterfully directed it is and how brilliant Fincher tells the story and gets his words across with such simple ease. The closing shots, which I won't ruin, say so much about the Zuckerberg and one could argue that these closing shots say more than anything leading up to the shots and I'm sure these shots are more damning than anything you could read in a two-thousand page biography. Fincher has the ability to jump back and forth from various aspects of the story but the main focus is on how the website came to be and how Zuckerberg had assistance from his best friend, Eduardo (Andrew Garfield) who would eventually sue him. Seeing how brilliant their minds were would make some think that the story would lose you but instead the screenplay by Aaron Sorkin perfectly lays out everything that went into creating it and everything that could possibly cause it to crumble. When you think about it it's really hard to come up with an interesting movie about a computer programmer but Fincher pulls it off because he structures it like a thriller and one can't help but feel as if they're being pulled into a dirty game with the villain willing to cut throats for his own ego. Eisenberg is downright brilliant as the Facebook creator and what amazed me is that I'm fairly certain the actor really isn't as smart or brilliant as the man he's playing yet he's still able to pull it off. There wasn't a single frame in the film where I didn't believe he was this young genius but what impressed me most is how cold he could be with that stone face of his. Buster Keaton was considered the great stone face of his era but I'm sure he'd even be impressed with what Eisenberg could do with the way he'd simply look at another person. Garfield is perfect as the "other" guy and Justin Timberlake continues to impress. His performance as the seedy Sean is perfectly brought to life by the actor and no matter what you feel about his "pop" reputation you have to give him credit here. The music score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross seems like something you'd here in a horror film but it perfectly sets the mood and atmosphere here. The cinematography by Jeff Cronenweth perfectly puts you in the film and the editing is exceptional as well. THE SOCIAL NETWORK is winning a lot of awards and it's certainly easy to see why. I think the majority of people were scratching their heads when they heard Fincher was doing a movie on Facebook because it just seemed unfilmable and uninteresting. What he's done with the film is something extremely special and I'm sure many decades from now people will be looking at this film to see the time capsule, which was this social networking days.