A Class Above

Rating: 9/10 (18 July 2011)

Subtly and slyly David Fincher turns to address head-on a theme which has only been tangentially hinted at in his previous movies - the American social and power elite. Fincher turns his attention to a depiction of the intellectual and social elites that attend such schools as Phillips Exeter and move onto attend Ivy League universities such as Harvard where the action takes place. Seemingly a story about the founding of a website this movie is also a blackly comic look at the most privileged section of US society during their formative student years before they go onto enter politics and business at the highest level. It is an excellent depiction of the Facebook creation myth in that it is very funny and quite gripping - and it takes skill to make a story such as this either funny or gripping. Hats off to those involved in making this movie - it is an entertaining treat.
Here we encounter the angst-ridden but aggressively acerbic IT genius Mark Zuckerberg who founded Facebook and his clashes with friends and rivals who wish to claim the invention of Facebook as their own. Fincher and Sorkin portray Zuckerberg as an outsider-insurgent motivated by resentment at exclusion from a "hierarchy within a hierarchy" represented by exclusive fraternal societies at Harvard such as the Phenix Club. Compliments must go to Aaron Sorkin, the scriptwriter, along with Fincher for this absorbing, and sometimes outright hilarious, portrayal of competing ambitions in the intellectual dog eat dog hot-house of Harvard.
Here students are portrayed as already self-consciously worrying about what mark they will make on society before even graduating let alone accepting their first seat on the board of a Fortune 500 company. Armand Hammer (his own casting a worthy joke in itself) steals the movie in the role of the Winklevoss twins who claimed they were owed a slice of "The Facebook" equity - but he has stiff competition from none other than Justin Timberlake who gives a powerful and smart (in its restraint) performance as Sean Parker of Napster fame.
Fincher's interest in the entrenched, dynastic social networks of wealth and privilege which rule America - despite one of the culture's strongest myths being that it is a "classless society" - could be glimpsed tangentially in previous movies. The representations of institutional politics,big business and the legal system in Seven and The Game were not centre stage although the placing of Jodie Foster's character in Panic Room among the social elite of Manhattan was a clearer marker of where Fincher's real interest might lie.
In these cynical and "post-political" times it might be thought redundant - or even ludicrous - to describe this movie as subversive or to even think that subversion was Sorkin and Fincher's aim. The movie merely portrays in a scathingly funny way a part of the American social fabric which is normally either invisible to most people or whose very existence is denied - the American aristocracy. A great movie. Fincher's last movie Benjamin Button was an adaptation of an F Scott Fitzgerald short story and the influence of Fitzgerald is all over this movie too. Mark Zuckerberg as a Gatsby for the 21st Century? The biggest joke of all of course is the alleged valuation of Facebook - but that is a different movie.