The Story of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook

Rating: 9/10 (11 December 2011)

The Social Network film tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg (Played by Jesse Eisenberg) and his journey through the creation of Facebook.com, a multi-billion dollar company. Written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher, the film takes a deep look into how the site was created, and all of the controversy and legal action that Zuckerberg faced throughout creating, launching, and building the website and company. Zuckerberg's business partner and CFO Eduardo Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield) who is involved initially because of his friendship with Zuckerberg, ends up suing after his shares are dissolved out of the company. In addition another three men from Harvard, brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (played by Armie Hammer) and their business partner Divya Narendra (Max Minghella), claim that Zuckerberg stole their idea for Facebook.
The Social Network tells a story that begins with friendship and loyalty, then mixes with business and money, and turns into greed and backstabbing. It may not be the most factually accurate film to portray a real-life story; but Sorkin and Fincher did a great job working together and Eisenberg did an amazing job at capturing the true character and personality of Mark Zuckerberg. As any basic genius to ace his SAT and walk through Harvard University as if it were a community college, Zuckerberg often felt superior to others and it came out in his personality and showed his social inadequacy. To capture his personality and how his unique brain works his dialogue had to be written in such a way that it was difficult for common people to fully comprehend what he was saying; often negating claims of lawyers in just a couple short sentences and talking down to people as if they were inferior because of his knowledge. It would turn out that his personality would cause him to lose the relationship with his girlfriend, and best friend/CFO. The film also shows Zuckerberg's weakness in that he trusted a failed businessman and Napster creator Sean Parker (Played by Justin Timberlake), who did help expand the business but also destroyed the relationship between the two partners.
The story is told from the point of view of the two separate litigation hearings versus Zuckerberg involving Saverin and the Winklevoss's. The attorneys and lawyers representing Zuckerberg and of the two opposing sides are conducting their interviews during the hearing; they will ask a question and there will be a response, then the film will flashback in time and show the actual scenes of when the instances happened. In order to do this the editing and writing had to work together, often flipping back and forth between the two different hearings, and showing both Zuckerberg's side of the story as well as his opposition. The film also quickly transitioned between quiet and impactful scenes to louder and emotional scenes.
The characters were all built up well and the individualism really came through. Mark's genius mentality and know-it-all attitude really showed in his dialogue, as well as his inability to really socialize with people or hold a steady relationship; then Eduardo's personable and businessman mentality came through and it showed the difference between the pair. As Sean Parker's character begins to get thrown into the mix, who is a loud and flashy man who comes off as over confident and knowing everything about business, the jealousy factor comes into play and begins to tear the partnership apart. On the other side there are the Winklevoss brothers who are world class athletes and have pretty much gotten what they've wanted their entire life. The script really brought out the personalities of these individuals, as well as the actors portraying the people with accurate mannerisms and behavior.
The film really shows how the idea of Facebook was brought up between a couple friends, and then once it became the phenomenon that it is, friendship became second in priority to expanding the business. It showed the unique personality of a man who became the youngest billionaire in the world. It's hard to tell exactly how accurate the film is because all of the facts still aren't disclosed, but the film is very well written and intriguing. I would recommend this to other viewers, I waited a long time to see it because I don't think very highly of Facebook, however I am glad I watched this film. I really connected with the people involved and felt emotions toward them, so that alone tells me it was well written and directed.