A rebel with a laptop

Rating: 8/10 (18 October 2010)

"The Social Network" is a fascinating look at the creation and legal dilemmas surrounding the ever-present Facebook. The film moves at a lightning-fast pace, covering a multitude of relationships, legal issues, messages, and themes. The filmmakers took a true story and used it as a backdrop to reflect on our current social hierarchies. When I first heard about this film I didn't really see a compelling story. It felt more like a 60 Minutes interview than anything else, but leave it up to a great script and strong director to visualize this computer-orientated material.
Typically, director David Fincher won't tackle a project unless it has a buzz on it, so hot—it drops on the lap of every major agent in Hollywood. I wasn't sure how the filmmakers were going to setup the dramatic arch of such a computer-bound narrative, and then it hits you twenty minutes into the film; reveal the story slightly out of chronological order, based on the specific legal elements. I'm not saying it wouldn't be fascinating to watch the eventful rise and fall of a young adult's hubris in the order it actually happened, but sometimes, a narrative works a little better if the structure is tweaked—crafted in a way that better serves the character dynamics.
I'm not going to lie, a second viewing won't hurt. The combination of intelligent, argumentative dialogue and thematic understandings of success is so layered, I'm sure I missed out on a few important messages. Sometimes, when you tend to focus on how well a film is shot and crafted, it's hard to concentrate on the details of the story, along with the rapid-fire dialogue.
"The Social Network" follows the cynical, somewhat misanthropic, computer rebel, Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), who created one of the largest computer websites in the world. His best friend and Harvard roommate, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), is his so-called partner in funding and establishing his new website. Along the way to success, Zuckerberg befriends a Californian connection, Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), who invented the widely used Napster music program. According to the film, Zuckerberg stole the Facebook idea from two, buffed-out, Harvard elite twins and cheated them on their original idea. This and many other legal infringements lead to a multimillion dollar lawsuit. This goes to show you, when the economy is down and a lot of money is involved, friendships will be betrayed, egos will be conflicted, and entitlement will be the name of the game.
Jesse Eisenberg, a strong Jewish-looking actor pinpoints this character as much as he nails the timing of the razor-sharp dialogue. He understands this young, ambitious individual. Zuckerberg really isn't a bad guy or as rebellious as he comes off. He's a man of strong principles, even when those principles betray the ones around him. He believes that the one who created is the one who is credited. Well, in this fiercely competitive American society, where lawyers, agents, and government officials run the game, Zuckerberg is really just a pawn. Even when his points come across as valid, there are certain principles in society, which undermine his own, and the only way to save his reputation is to play the game his own lawyers conduct. When all is said and done, Zuckerberg is still just a young man who wants to be accepted. He comes off as a rebel, but in a key scene where his new, party-animal friend, Sean Parker, gets arrested at a frat party, his image is suddenly tarnished. We finally see that his reputation means a lot more than his credit. This is a prime example as to why this character works—it's three dimensional, and by the end, Zuckerberg's personality backfires on the audience's expectations.
I think one of the film's strongest themes is social elitism. The film questions the importance of elitism in a university, which is bound to its social upbringing, more so than a student's GPA, at least I speculate. In the scene where the Harvard twins are in a rowboat competition at a prestigious English school, director Fincher blurs out the edges of the frame in certain close-up shots. The rowboat scene is understated by Trent Reznor's (lead singer for Nine Inch Nails) tantalizing and operatic score, which goes to show you that music can reveal a whole new level to a scene. The overall understanding I received from that masterly shot-and-edited scene is that Fincher is both revealing and mocking the students' focal point and sheer determination to be accepted in Harvard's elite social circle.
This is as far as I'm going to delve into the narrative. As you can see, it covers a lot of ground and David Fincher's craft is in top form. Checkout The Social Network and I guarantee you'll have your own thematic understanding of this entertaining true story.