More Than Face-Value

Rating: 8/10 (9 March 2011)

I admit I fell in love with The Social Network: It was smart, funny, and sympathetic. I liked it so much I watched it thrice, even though I was sitting for my GCSE 'A' Levels.
The Social Network is not just a snarky narrative about awkward and rich young men. It is also a portrait of human nature, as we learn how to grapple with self-identity. On screen, the characters spar with their wit and their lawyers; off-screen, we are left wondering how much authenticity is masked by their defensiveness.
I adored The King's Speech for it's sheer humanity - the latter made me cry, while the former made me laugh. The King's Speech appears to be the better of the two, in my extremely subjective opinion, because I was laughing and crying WITH the characters - while I was probably laughing AT the characters in The Social Network.
Nonetheless, this movie made me a converted Aaron Sorkin fan. He ranks next to Alan Bennett, the wonderful British playwright who wrote The History Boys. Perhaps like The History Boys, I would learn to outgrow The Social Network, with all its awkward charm and angst. However, it was a profound movie that made me question issues that plague our lives today: why we are driven to success, and why we seek to escape from ourselves, to hide from our own darkest shadows.