Review - The Social Network

The Social Network represents for me a triumph of film craft. The combined efforts of scriptwriter Aaron Zorkin and director David Fincher have created a astute social commentary that reveals both the nature of how the internet dictates and influences our lives and at the same time telling the story of the lives of two friends as they struggle to get ahead.

Aaron Zorkin - writer

David Fincher - director

The story explores the rise and uber success of Mark Zuckerberg as the creator of the website Facebook. From genius computer science major at Harvard, Zorkin and Fincher explore the often painfully awkward, at times computer like delivery of a young man trying to put himself on the map. His journey takes him into a friendship and later a  business partnership with fellow Harvard student Eduardo Saverin. Together they make history but ultimately the film explores their personal stories as they strive against the odds to gain status in a social system that by its nature excludes them. They find fame, unparalleled riches, but at the cost of a friendship that allowed them to achieve it. This is a story of friendship, loss and betrayal and one that Zorkin and Fincher realise with masterful skill.

Jesse Eisenberg

Zuckerberg's and Saverin's ambitions to get into Finals Clubs at Harvard form the basis to the film. These clubs grant access to the higher eschellons of society at Harvard and open doors to immeasurable social stature both in and beyond college. For Zuckerberg his geeky nature and closed off nature prevent him from standing a chance. Despite being an internet success in his teenage years and turning down a million dollars from Microsoft for his software, Zuckerberg is at best social awkward. He has little to no success with girl as the first scene so wonderfully illustrates. His mind rushes at a million miles an hour, processing words and ideas like a computer. Input and Output. Zuckerberg is a person who the moniker of genius is no exaggeration. He thinks far beyond the box, so much so it appears he can't grasp the conventions within the box, namely how to interact emotionally or authentically. Zuckerberg comes across as hard to read. He gives away nothing in his sparse emotional repertoire, only his eyes show the sparks of something intense within. This is played by Jesse Eisenberg to a tee. The performance absolutely conveys the character described in the script and seems to capture the man as he is in reality.

Andrew Garfield

Saverin is very different. He thinks totally within the box. Much like his friend, Saverin is not on the face of it an ideal candidate for selection by the Finals Clubs. He too is gawky and geeky, but to his advantage he has found success trading on the stock markets and news of this has reached the ears of people of status at Harvard. Unlike Zuckereurg, who resides in his bitterness, Saverin is willing to put in the time socialising with the right people to rise the ranks and is rewarded for his efforts with acceptance to on of the clubs.

With these character arcs and their back stories established the story proper is able to begin. Here I find the real quality of Sorkin's writing. As he had shown with the West Wing, Zorkin has an uncanny ability to make a topic that most people do not fully understand and to roll it out with witty and revealling dialogue that makes the topic feel accessible and understandable. Zuckerberg's mind works beyond the comprehension of the audience but Zorkin makes the audience latch on to him. His failings with his date in the early scenes show how his humour is obtuse to the point of being caustic, but that his abilities stand him out and are at once engaging and awe inspiring. The audience wants to know how this guy works, what he is capable of. Anyone entering the cinema will most likely know already of the meteoric success of Facebook. This allows Zorkin to twist our interest into learning about the man behind it, and the script shows wonderfully that Zuckerberg is a most interesting man indeed. 

Embittered by being dumped, Zuckerberg turns to the internet to show both his date and the world of Harvard just what he is capable of. He hacks the college intranet to pull of the pictures of all the girls on campus with the intent on putting out a comparison website named FaceMash.com. Fincher directs these scenes that ultimately amount to Zuckerberg typing with his well established ability tension and swift pacing. The words of Zuckerberg's blog that was written in parallel with the creation of the website provide the narrative. He explains in his own revealing words the ease of hacking the college security, his motivation for doing this task. The monologue shows his morality, his inner voice and his genius in a rapid paced scene that rises into its climax with the college network crashing as a measure of the success from the huge number of users. We learn Zuckerberg feels his abilities superior to those whose security he tears through. We learn to he sees issues of privacy and ethics as mere hurdles to overcome. For Zuckerberg it appears everything is a means to an end. He is goal driven to the point he puts all other considerations aside, another allusion to the computers that drive his website and his life. This introduction to him shows us all we need to know of how he got to were his is now.

As an example of film craft this incident in reality took a period of days to complete, yet Fincher plays it out over the course of one alcohol fueled night of angst. Zuckerberg's efforts got him good and bad attention. Bad from the college and more scorn from the girl who plays out as the tragic object of his affections. The good attention comes in the form of the Vinklevoss twins who want Zuckerberg to finish their website, an elitist version of a dating site. The Vinklevoss could give Zuckerberg status beyond his dreams. They show him their site and he shows them his interest. It is pointed out in the book that the film is based upon, The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, that when people see interest in Zuckerberg they see their own dreams realised in his abilities, feeling they know him and his motivations, feeling him to be a friend, but in reality they do not know him at all. Again the script conveys this to perfection. Zuckerberg has this hint that being with these people give him a new edge, an achievement. Yet under the surface bubbles something else. As he runs from the meeting to speak to Saverin, we see his real passion unleashed, his own goal a website called the TheFacebook.com. We see on closer inspection the joy is also that he is bettering the high standing twins as he knows without compromise that his idea is far and away better than theirs. This for Zuckerberg, as Zorkin writes it, is social climbing. 

So begins the creation of the website itself. Saverin provides the cash, Zuckerberg provides the skills. A friendship becomes a business partnership. Initially pair share the spoils of success together, as one. This is illustrated by the groupie episode. From Saverin's perspective particularly the friends feel closer than ever. This is short lived when differences of ideology come to the forefront. Do we advertise, or does that threaten to undo the coolness of the site? These dilemma's test the pair's friendship ultimately splitting them over the continent as Zuckerberg goes west to Silicon Valley to expand. This plays out in the script and film like a divorce instigated by the third wheel in the relationship, represented by the interests of Sean Parker (played as an ubercool tech player by Justin Timberlake). Parker, as the founder of Napster, brings experience to the table that Zuckerberg values over the now contentious aims of Saverin.

The website drives a greater and greater wedge into the friends relationship. Feeling Zuckerberg is spending his money without listening to his input, Saverin pulls the plug on the company's funds. Zorkin plays this incredibly well, showing both perspectives and both counter arguments through the characters. This is done through the use of the law suits that form the framework for the narrative. As the characters explain the events so the show their emotions, their sense of frustration, their justifications for their actions. This framework allows us to understand what could not have been shown in a conventional narrative. The dialogue in the legal scenes is perhaps the best in film. It is intensely revealing of the characters and gives the story an incredible intensity carrying the film into the realms of a tragic decline of a friendship. Equally the legal scenes with the twins who Zuckerberg's contempt and hubris for those that would take from him for doing nothing themselves. We join him in his scorn for the pompous twins who gain richly of this unique young man's efforts. As a writer myself I revel Zuckerberg's witty and caustic put downs as the twins are portrayed as the exploiters of creative talent. They represent so beautifully the privileged stance of believing that an idea has innate value when they themselves are without the ability and knowledge to realise that idea.

 

As Facebook goes global so Zuckerberg is raised above all social status. Yet the film leaves us with a tragic sense that his success has not bought him closer to the thing he really craved. His character of single minded divotion to his goals has left him without friends, the greatest irony of the Facebook founder. Indeed all his efforts and he still pines for the girl he lost in Harvard. Zuckerberg is painted as a very real and complex individual and one who Zorkin and Fincher allow us to root for despite the first impressions we have. Social networking plays on these impressions and so the film makers give a solid and astute observation into how technology brings us together yet at once represents the insular nature of society. Even on Facebook you are only friends with those of status if they invite you. 

An excellent film with performances from the two main actors, Eisenberg and Garfield as well as Timberlake that portrayed these incredible young men, making them accessible, cool and fundamentally flawed in their traits. The Oscars absolutely should go to Fincher and particularly Zorkin. Without question this is the best example of filmmakers showing their craft to the benefit of the story. This is achieved without overplaying their hand to the extent that their own personality becomes a character in the film, as I believed happened with Black Swan and Aronofsky.

Social Network would be a most deserving winner of best film, but I will hold off on that judgement until all of the 10 reviews are in.