The Social Network

Rating: 10/10 (3 October 2010)

The Social Network is based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich and follows Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg as he creates what is now one of the most visited websites and forms of social networking ever entitled Facebook.The film shows the socially awkward and acid tongued Mark Zuckerberg as he creates the website and after time he keeps getting more and more members signing up and joining it and after it becomes a big success that is when the different lawsuits come out. I am not a particularly really tech friendly person. I know how to use parts of a computer and the internet, but if you were to ask me to build a website from scratch, design anything, or anything to do with coding I am completely lost. The Social Network does talk about how they create the site and some big technical words may come your way, but it is not the whole film and doesn't leave those who are unfamiliar with it confused and not able to get into what is going on in the film. There is so much I absolutely loved and adored about The Social Network that I will try and remember it all and get it into this review. First off the direction is great. Yes this is a Hollywood big budget movie, but it does not feel like one. Because the film itself is pretty dark the atmosphere and mood set by the director is more low key and has a haunting and at times macabre look to it that suits the going on happenings of the characters around. When, I talk about this I do not mean to say that The Social Network is a horror film, but instead that in other ways it is disturbing and very dark and the dim lighting and use of what I guess would be fluorescent lights to give some scenes a haunting glow, I thought was pulled off perfectly and set the tone for the film really well. The script to the film is amazing for several reasons. It takes a true life story that in the hands of another director, or script writer could have become a fairly unoriginal biopic, but instead it breathes life and there is so much energy here. The characters, or at least a lot of them in the film have very rich vocabularies and they tend to talk very fast, but just listening to some of these conversations is fascinating because of the quick wit of some of the characters and what they say as well as some of the awkwardness around it as well because a lot of these characters have very poor social skills (is that why they created a social networking site?). The script which goes back and forth from the characters at school to talking with the lawyers during the lawsuit is all absolutely fascinating and with the quick jump cut editing it feels fresh, alive and something that we do not see all that often. The acting from Jesse Eisenberg who plays Mark Zuckerberg is a brilliant performance because of his smug arrogance as well as his sharp wit and acid tongued speech to his social awkwardness. It's all here in this performance and it's great. At the same time all of the supporting characters do a great job as well. The Social Network not only looks at the creation of one of the biggest and most profitable websites of all time, but also shows the decline of today's youth. The teenagers and young adults that are portrayed in the film all have huge egos and are really egocentric, narcissistic and nihilistic. They care for themselves and themselves only and in some ways will do whatever it takes to succeed. In it's own way, perhaps the creation of Facebook has led to some of this. Instead of talking to a friend, or family member on the phone, you now all do it on Facebook and you lose that sense of personal touch and the relationship to the person. The conversations one has on the internet or cell phones is a lot different than it used to be and illiteracy and bad grammar and English skills are on the rise and is some of these sites to blame? The film also looks at these dangerously empty lives of these young adults who try and fill in what is missing with drugs, alcohol, sex and money, but we see that they are never really happy and continue to lead an empty existence. The film is a brilliant character study in that way. I found myself loving The Social Network from close to the beginning right up to the end and the film lingered with me. I thought about it and what I would tell others and say in this review about it. The film is powerfully and masterfully made with an enormous amount of talent behind it. Mark my words in years and decades from now The Social Network will still be watched and talked about by a lot of people and will go down in history as one of the best films of all time. The way it captures the mood and feel of today's youth is brilliant and is a real eye opener while being tremendously entertaining at the same time. This is one of the best films I have seen in quite awhile and I think it is safe to say also that it is one of the best films I have ever seen.