You don't get to the greatest idea of the century, without having a great film made of it ...

Rating: 10/10 (7 May 2011)

After his disappointing "Benjamin Button", Fincher handles another subject, no less risky ... Indeed, I thought a movie dealing with algorithms and a courtroom case would be anything but entertaining ... how wrong I was!
The film actually depressed me  because THE idea of the century has already been done. There won't be any other great and creative idea for about 50 years, and the guy who got it, is from my generation  hell, I'm even older than him. Sorry for that burst of ego, but I guess the purpose of a review is to be sincere
Intelligence? Creativity? Luck? Maybe all these factors combined can fulfill a vision, but not one worth billions of dollars, I don't believe in that. Mark Zuckenberg, played by a remarkable actor with a rhyming name, Jesse Eisenberg, was a genius, and his paternity of Facebook is undeniable. As he dryly shouts to the Winklevoss twins, played by the two, no wait, the one Arnie Hammer: "If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook" Implacably and impeccably logical. Mark is not just the hero of the film, he's MY hero, and whether I approve the concept of Facebook or not, is pointless. He's got a successful idea, that changed the face of the world, more than ever. He won, and I applaud.
Now, why did I use the word genius? Because it takes a three-dimensional intelligence to have such an idea. Mark felt an even greater potential in Internet, not exploited yet. Internet was the key. He knew people loved social networking, they needed to exist, to be somebodies. Internet puts you in a map, literally. "I click therefore I exist" this is the Cogito of the 2000's. Mark got that. That's from the past, from the present, he understood the natural tendencies we all have to reach popularity. "Existence precedes popularity" Popularity as the modern essence of human beings, this is the existentialism of the 2000's. Finally, he knew, that in the future, users will want to know about stuff happening to people they know, with an almost voyeuristic approach. There's no real philosophy to describe this, but this is what Mark predicted. We'll never know if someone would have come with the same idea  well, maybe the Winklevoss twins, but they were destined to inspire Mark, with the Harvard network idea The twins were number two, translation: nothing.
Past, present, future combined in one hell of a visionary concept named "The Facebook", Mark's friend, Eduardo (Andrew Garfield) financed it, and the creator of Napster, Sean Parker, Justin Timberlake in a scene-stealing performance, was the mentor, the adviser, whose greatest contribution was to suggest to remove the "the". The rest is a whole success story told in flashback from the hearings opposing Mark, the twins, and Eduardo, whom he personally fired through an unfriendly move. Nothing personal, strictly business. The movie is not here to judge Mark. The tag-line summarizes it best, anyway: "You don't get to 500 millions friends without making a few enemies", probably the most memorable tag-line of 2010, so iconic it's the only one to be featured in the poster in such big characters.
It's all about self-confidence and capability to take painful decisions. Mark is irreverent, eccentric but he does have one quality: he respects people on the basis of their own accomplishments. He mocks the courtroom because no one is capable to produce something in the same vein than Facebook, but he respects Sean Parker for what he created. Tell me what you did, and I will respect you, or at least have the humility not to judge me. This notion of respect is crucial because this is what will drive his creative process, the ability to listen, and to translate any idea into a concept. When a wimpy student comes to ask him if one girl is single or not, Mark realizes that "Facebook" concept is so big, it's like a goldmine for new ideas and improvements. It's such a great success story that he even learns from case that failed, or worse, that succeeded after the creator sold the rights, like the 'Victoria Secret' story.
This film proves how ruthless is today's world, how we can make it big if we think big. We're indeed in an animal farm, with insects, sheep, and outside, foxes, predators. Some people just want to be successful businessmen, some other just to live, others to be accepted. Some use their strength, others their brains, and other their looks, like girls, or chicks whose sexist portrayal didn't bother me  I studied in a campus, in the same time as Mark, a big business school with hot girls and guys so sinister they were already masturbating over working in some big companies, and I know they got now the girls they fantasized about, but they're still obedient agents of a system that prefer to handle sheep rather than foxes. I had enough intelligence to understand this modern Social Darwinism, like many other free-spirited nobodies, but Mark had the idea AND the competence.
Yes, Mark got the point, but again, it wasn't enough, please stop with all that 'luck' bullshit. I'm not a genius, I'm not Mark, but I know that I'm no computer pro, so even if I had the chance to think of the concept, I wouldn't have enough knowledge to apply what I wanted. Would I get the Nobel Prize of Medicine just because I thought it would be cool to find a cure for AIDS? Mark was practical, pragmatic, and had enough intelligence to build a strong competence in Internet.
It might be a drama for some, a biopic, for me it's a great story driven by a creative script, and a true inspiration ...