The Social Network" is almost perfect... But is it perfectly accurate?

Rating: Null/10 (11 October 2011)

The Verdict
"The Social Network" is one of the best movies of 2010. It is definitely worth watching even if you are not a Facebook fan and do not like social networks in general. The story of Facebook is only a showcase for the modern American society, American elite colleges and American business world in particular. At the movie core is a deep and non-trivial exploration of such eternal human culture themes as friendship and betrayal, power and money, youth and coming of age, life choices and life priorities.
The Positives
Perfection is something we have learned to expect from David Fincher's movies. Whether we like them or not, lack of professionalism is never among their flaws."The Social Network" is not an exception from that rule – it is as close to perfection as it gets.
Rarely can we find such a well-balanced movie, where all the high quality components are assembled together in a perfect harmony. "The Social Network" won Oscars for adapted screenplay, original music score, and film editing and earned the five other nominations, including directing (David Fincher) and lead actor (Jesse Eisenberg), as well as the overall best picture nomination.
"The Social Network" is a very, very good movie that easily earns a well deserved "A" grade, but in my opinion, it is not a truly outstanding movie, which brings us to "The Negatives" section of the review.
The Negatives
I think that the absolute majority of people feel mixed emotions towards the main character by the end of the movie. They of course admire his intellect, his passion, his hard work, his almost instinctive business grip. At the same time, they look down on him with disgust: a cocky nerd, almost a sociopath, and a king of antisocial behavior, an insensitive, cruel, deceitful person who betrayed his best friend, publicly and rudely insulted his former girlfriend on the Internet, and stole an idea of Facebook from the business partners who trusted him with it.
Moreover, the movie gives us that warm and fuzzy feeling of superiority over the youngest billionaire in the world. Yes, maybe we are not that smart, not that rich, and not that famous, but look what a terrible price he paid for his success!
He sacrificed everything to create Facebook and to grow it into a billion dollar company. He thought it would make him the biggest winner, but look who is the biggest loser - his best friend is a laptop, his soul mate is a web site, and his world is savaged by arrogance and loneliness.
The main problem with the dramatic and nasty "dark side" of Mark Zuckerberg so skillfully portrayed in the movie is that it is not real. It exists only in our imagination fueled by the Aaron Sorkin's masterfully written screenplay that adapts Ben Mezrich's 2009 fictional book "The Accidental Billionaires".
The real Mark Zuckerberg is very different from his portrayal in the movie; see for example the article by David Kirkpatrick.
I am not saying that Mark Zuckerberg is a saint, or that every bad thing told about him in the movie is a lie. He is not an angel, but he is also not a demon - he is just like you and me, only slightly smarter, a bit wealthier, and somewhat more famous.
I am not trying to say that intellect, wealth, and fame are the ultimate things, in fact I believe in quite the opposite. However, I wish the movie were more honest in that respect and showed us a real Mark Zuckerberg rather than his overly dramatic caricature masterfully created for feeding and captivating our lazy imagination.
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