This is more then just 'Facebook the Movie'

Rating: 9/10 (22 October 2010)

When it was first announced that there going to be a bio-pic about Mark Zuckerberg and the creation of Facebook it was seen by many as a quick cash-in on the popularity of website. But luckily Aaron Sorkin wrote the script and David Fincher was setting in the director's chair and that made The Social Network one of the most highly anticipated film. It is clear that The Social Network is going to be one of the big hitters at the Oscars this year (though my preference is for Inception).
The film tells two stories that are interlinked. The first from 2003 when Mark Zuckerberg (Jessie Eisenberg) as a Harvard undergrad who after breaking up with his girlfriend Erich (Rooney Mara) has a misogynistic rant on the internet and make a website, FaceMash where men get to rate Harvard female undergrads against each other. When he gains notoriety the Winklevoss Twins (Armie Hammer) recruit him to make a website, but he ends up making his own website with his best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield). But as Facebook grows Saverin believes that they need to make money out of the website and Zuckerberg falls under the spell of Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the founder of Napster who wants to isolate Saverin. In 2007 the film tells the two lawsuits Zuckerberg is facing with the Winklevoss twins and Saverin both suing him.
Sorkin is a great writing and The Social Network shows his skills and usual traits of quick, intelligence, witty dialogue, intelligence well developed characters and quick pacing and excellent plotting, using the legal proceedings as a framing device. The film sets out to show that Harvard is controlled by social elites, with misogyny raging in the Final Clubs. Sorkin was unable to speak to Zuckerberg so most of the script was a fiction, but it was an entertaining fiction. Fincher's direction added to the script; keeping the film down to Earth and Jeff Cronenweth's dark cinematography adding to the tone of the film. Fincher kept the film in the real world and unlike Oliver Stone who tried to be stylist with Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (a film that was difficult to make visual), Fincher takes a more gritty realistic tone. Fincher and Sorkin shows that Harvard can be a sleazy place with heavy drinking, drug taking and treating women as no more then sex objects: but there are also intelligence people there and people who disagree with what Zuckerberg did. Fincher and Sorkin make a fast paced, entertaining drama with moments of comedy.
There is a very good young cast in the film. Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg almost like he was autistic, a young man with great intelligence but almost no social skills, who as Erich said 'But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole', which is true in the context of the film. Zuckerberg is a shown to be a man willing to steal other people's ideas and concepts, use people and string them along and hides behind computers, becomes horribly bitter if anyone dares cross him and the internet because his lack of social skills. Hammer has a tough job of playing twins and two different characters and he puts it off. Both men are from a wealthy background and felt wronged by Zuckerberg. Garfield is a strong performer, playing one of the few truly sympathetic characters of the film, someone royally screwed over by his one time friend. Before the film Timberland did not have a great reputation as an actor but Fincher was able to get the best out of him and show he can be a good acting talent. Sean Parker is made to be the real villain of the piece, a man who looks a like a 30-year-old who wants to be a uni student, a man who speaks pretentious rubbish about the internet and what he did with the music industry; a man who used Zuckerberg.
Sorkin worried that his characters would not sound real because of their age: but Sorkin knows that everyone is an individual and have their own speech pattern. Whilst there is slang that every generation claims for themselves most teenagers and young adult speak the same as everyone else and it great that Sorkin makes his young characters sound intelligence. Language has not changed much between generations and if anything the internet has made it more universal.
With all the good things about The Social Network, I am critical of their portrayal of England in a short sequence, going through all the posh stereotypes of what an American would think England is like. I would have expected better from Fincher and Sorkin who are both intelligence men and well travelled. Also it was a shame their didn't use the Kolacny Brothers and Scala version of Creep in the film.
Overall, an excellent film and deserving of most of the praise it has received.