A modern classic

Rating: 9/10 (1 October 2010)

With the leaves starting to change colour, the onset of movie awards season begins. The first salvo in the battle to be crowned best of the season is Columbia Picture's The Social Network. Unless you've been living on a deserted island for the past few months, I'm pretty sure you've heard of this movie. It focuses on the founding of and legal battles over the social networking juggernaut Facebook.com.
If you have been following the hype surrounding this film, you might believe this is the greatest story put to film since Citizen Kane. The honest truth is, it might be. The film has a lot of talent behind it, starting with director David Fincher, in a fine return to form after the saccharine Benjamin Button. Right there with him is noted screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who ably adapts the book The Accidental Billionaires that chronicled the rise of Facebook. Fincher assembles a great cast of young actors, led by Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook creator and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Joining him are Andrew Garfield (the new Peter Parker) as co-founder Eduardo Saverin, Justin Timberlake as Napster co-founder and early Facebook acolyte Sean Parker, Armie Hammer in the dual role of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who had a similar idea to Facebook that they approached Zuckerberg about, and Rooney Mara as Zuckerberg's ex-girlfriend, Erica Albright.
The actors are uniformly good, with Eisenberg and Garfield standing out amongst the others. They handle Sorkin's trademark rapid-fire dialogue with ease and are very convincing as these real-life people. Eisenberg as Zuckerberg eschews the Michael Cera-esquire persona he's developed in films like Zombieland and Adventureland. Here, he creates a man conflicted by his desire for recognition and his ruthless drive to achieve that recognition. Garfield makes Saverin an immensely likable and sympathetic character, Zuckerberg's best friend and partner who sees his vision of the company get destroyed as outside parties move in.
While Eisenberg and Garfield stand out the most, perhaps the most impressive was Justin Timberlake. He plays Parker as an manipulative opportunist, a man who has already tasted success and wants more. He's introduced to us waking up in the bed of a girl he barely knows and who doesn't know him at all. For Zuckerberg, Parker is everything he wants to be, attractive, funny, charming. The best scene for Timberlake occurs in a San Francisco nightclub where Zuckerberg and Parker discuss the future and potential of Facebook. Parker becomes an almost Faustian character, planting the seeds of discord that will eventually lead to the demise of Zuckerberg and Saverin's partnership and friendship. It's a seduction scene and it's done brilliantly.
At its heart, The Social Network is a story about two friends who go into business together and how that business destroys their relationship. Fincher breaks up the story a bit, moving back and forth between the early days of Facebook and meetings with lawyers that came later. You can see the pain and heartbreak on both actor's faces as the square off against each other, flanked by their respective lawyers. Watching their friendship slowly fall apart, you can't help but feel for both, as they perfectly complemented each other. Saverin is the more approachable, social comfortable half, the one that can deal with the public. Zuckerberg is the anti-social introvert, obsessed with pushing his creation.
Another element of the film added a lot to building the tension needed for movie's emotional payload to be delivered. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross create a great score that works brilliantly at underscore just what is happening in the movie. While it does become a bit obvious at certain points, for the most part Reznor and Ross's score is subdued, breaking out at certain points to enhance a certain emotional beat. It's a key component in the film.
As the first in what looks like a rather promising line up of fall films, ones that will be vying for awards season accolades later on, The Social Network is a substantial effort. It hits just the right note and is a fairly accurate reflection of the times we live in and how communication and interaction, the various social networks we engage in, are evolving at an ever-accelerating rate. The Social Network doesn't serve as a warning about this, nor did I really see it as a cautionary tale. It's a fascinating story, told impeccably well. http://tinyurl.com/2ddrf8j