The trees won't let you see the forest!

Rating: 10/10 (4 October 2013)

The comments of some people here remind me of the old saying that goes "the trees didn't let him see the forest". It appears many posters are looking for a deeper insight about life in general or for more human emotion in the characters at large. And these are not what The Social Network is about. This is a movie about business opportunity and entrepreneurship, not a personal drama. A movie doesn't need to be psychologically profound or dig deep into human nature to be exciting, refreshing and entertaining. And The Social Network is all of the above. This film is magnificent because it teaches us three very important lessons and does so while being fun to watch.
The first one is that, if you're smart and willing to work hard, there's no limit to how much financial success you can have regardless of how young you may be, specially if you live in the USA or any economically developed nation. There is a land where dreams can come true after all.
The second one is that there's usually a price to pay for such success, like the loss of trust and friendships for instance. It should be noted that the main reason most business ventures involving more than one owner go awry is because of the greed of the partners once the big bucks arrive. Before a company makes any real money the founders have nothing to fight each other for. This is a lesson no one who watches this picture will ever forget. And there's value in that.
The third valuable lesson is that you always have to watch your back no matter who you're working with. If you're too naive to protect your interests there will always be an opportunist, like Sean Parker or even your "best friend", around to take advantage. That's another didactic point that can help all of us in the future.
Besides the above, this movie is very well directed and even better acted. It has a very nice flow to it despite the constant cutoffs between the story (completely told in flashbacks) and the attorney's office squabbles. There's one more very important aspect to The Social Network: it's historic value. We usually only attribute such description to films that depict events that happened long ago. Right now since the movie just came out recently and deals with issues that have transpired in the last decade only, we fail to see that it, in fact, depicts history in the making. Many years from now people who watch it will understand how a completely new era in human communication came to be.
The ending of the movie is also a reason for hope. If you notice no one ends up a big loser. Everyone gets something: even the supposedly wronged Winklevoss twins end up with a "paltry" $62 M settlement, money they didn't even really need in the first place anyway.
You don't have to like the characters in this movie, in fact I believe they were written to be despised by most of us. Mark Zuckerberg was not necessarily such a bad person but the reason of his success does not lie in his being the nicest guy in the world. There's truth to the fact that successful businessmen have to be driven, ruthless and yes, greedy. Whether we can forgive them or not for those shortcomings is a whole different story. Eduardo Savarin was too innocent, trusting and distracted in his pursuit of creating a global company. Sean Parker is a shark that sees the opportunity to make up for his previous business failures at the expense of Eduardo and others. So what's new? That's just life! But having little or no sympathy for the characters should have no bearing on how you rate this film. They're simply human beings with their flaws and weaknesses, as we all are. Tony Montana epitomizes what an extremely depraved and despicable individual looks like, but most of us still loved Scarface despite that fact.
Of course, every movie can always be improved but I sincerely believe the subject matter of this one is creativity, wizardry and entrepreneurship and not human emotion or innate goodness. From this perspective dwelling deeper into the characters' idiosyncrasies would probably have detracted from the point it tries to make. The Social Network is a fabulous flick and I consider it a must-see, specially for those looking for inspiration to get their business (computer related or not) off the ground.