The Social Network: Exclusive Review

Admittedly, if there was going to be a movie made about the real story behind Facebook and all of its legal drama, then the only way I would watch it would be if David Fincher directed it and Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay.

For let’s face it, the story of Facebook might have a stretch of strong, fantastical drama and some very interesting characters along the way, but at its root it is the story of a couple of nerds who decided to create something incredibly nerdy.  MySpace and Friendster were both already running in the wild (which the film does mention), and Facebook was an elitist way of targeting people away from that by creating a sort of social club via the internet.

This story isn’t the story of snide businessmen or savvy, dangerous gangsters.  This movie is about a couple of genius college students who went on to create something extraordinary while at the same time attending Harvard classes.

But given the amount of talent Aaron Sorkin brings to the page, and the visual sense of style that David Fincher exhibits with ease, these two men form the perfect combination to bring this story to life.  Only Sorkin could write Mark Zuckerberg in such a way that the average audience member would care, at all, about his existence or his life dilemma.  And only Fincher could pit these character’s legal battle in a way that one would care about the outcome, and the emotional distress involved in suing friends and classmates for millions of dollars.

For you see, in order to want to watch a movie about Facebook, you can’t just be an avid Facebook user.  You have to care about the story behind the site, and more specifically you have to care about the eventual outcome involving the main figures and, of course, what is at stake for each of them.

It is clear from the opening scene alone that Sorkin knows this, and as such he begins his tale by putting the audience directly in the middle of Zuckerberg’s heart being crushed.  From here on we see Zuckerberg do whatever it takes to form a social site that exists to unite college friends and take the social scene of college onto the internet.  And through brilliant editing, we’re given an interwoven story about Zuckerberg’s friends, enemies, girls, and success.

Jesse Eisenberg (Zombieland, The Squid and the Whale) achieves something here in the role of Mark Zuckerberg that Michael Cera only wishes he could achieve.  Eisenberg manages to elevate himself out of his stereotypical role of the awkward, shy loser and creates a persona of Zuckerberg that is downright creepy.  He appears aloof, distracted, and socially inept, yet at the same time has a genius hiding underneath it all that, when it appears, is downright scary.  It’s Eisenberg’s greatest achievement in acting, surely, and he does something that the script requires a talented actor to be able to do; bring likability to a real person who appears wholly unlikable.

The standout performance of the entire movie, hands down, goes to Armie Hammer and his portrayer of twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.  Armie is not a twin, but plays these two perfectly throughout the film.  So perfectly, in fact, that if I hadn’t just told you he wasn’t a twin you would have thought it was two actors playing the roles.  These two characters receive some of the best lines in the movie, and their anger and frustration at their rancid situation helps to sell just how frustrating Zuckerberg is to deal with.

But the heart of the movie, and were it succeeds best, is on the shoulders of director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin.  David Fincher is, after all, a master of his craft.  The genius behind the lens has created some of the most influential movies of the last two decades (Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac) and rarely seems to misfire.  The man has an amazing eye for dark, dreary situations and clearly understands hope and desperation, and how to put them onto celluloid.

Aaron Sorkin (who penned the greatest television show no one watched, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) is in perfect form here, using his talkative style to bring characters fully off of the page and plastered in your mind.  As he said after the screening in a Q&A, “I just put people in a room and have them talk,” but yet he does it so well.

The only negative the movie has going for it would be Justin Timberlake, who was obviously cast as Sean Parker (creator of Napster) in a tongue-in-cheek manner.  Timberlake is overly obnoxious here, and by the end of the movie I found myself not caring, one way or the other, about his role.  I think it’s the only miscast of the entire movie, and the only thing that felt incredibly awkward about the experience.

The Social Network is a movie you will want to see, not just because you’ve had a Facebook account for the last few years, but because it is filmmaking at its finest.  The movie does feel about ten minutes too long, but that doesn’t stop you from caring about the characters involved during its entire runtime.  I certainly clicked the ‘Like’ button after the credits rolled.

Related News

Facebook Ignores the Social Network

Article written by Matt Wehner on GotchaMovies.com. Reposted with permission.