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Depending on which story you believe, Facebook was either founded outright by a socially inept idiot who, ironically, was looking for a way to improve his own social status. Or, it was stolen without giving recognition (and profits) to those who originated the idea. That’s the central conflict in David Fincher’s The Social Network, a film that looks at the moment at which Facebook, inarguably the most revolutionary social phenomenon of the century, was invented.
Alan Sorkin’s brilliant script (from Ben Mezrich’s book, The Accidental Billionaires) avoids taking a singular point-of-view, instead tracking dual narratives, one that unfolds in the past – as Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) refines and launches his social networking experiment – the other in the present where he’s giving a deposition to lawyers representing former partners and developers who claim Zuckerberg stole their ideas.
The “past” part of the story begins in late 2003, when a drunk and love-scorned Zuckerberg hacks into the school’s computer system, steals photos of female students, creates a website that displays the photos side-by-side, and encourages fellow students to vote for which one of the girls is the hottest. He calls the site Facemash, and it’s only a matter of hours before it goes viral across the campus, causing not only an outpouring of cries of misogyny amongst Harvard co-eds, but also a shutdown of the school’s entire computer network.
From the ashes of the disaster is born the framework of Facebook, which we know eventually becomes the social networking home base to more than 500 million Internet users across the world. But the phenomenon didn’t come about without a healthy dose of controversy. A pair of twin crew jocks named Winklevoss (both played by Armie Hammer) claim that Zuckerberg’s idea for Facebook came from them and that he just beat them to the market with the help of fellow computer genius Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield). The Winklevoss’s eventually sue Zuckerberg, forming the “present” side of Sorkin’s story that we see unfold in the law firm deposition room.
At its root, this type of non-linear storytelling is gangly and cumbersome, but Fincher and Sorkin expertly guide us through all aspects of the complex story, where everyone is seemingly right, and everyone is seemingly wrong. Zuckerberg is given due credit for his genius of vision with what he thought social networking could become, and equal attention is paid to the victims who got caught under the wheels of the abrasive entrepreneur’s ride to the top. In the hands of a different filmmaking team, the whole thing could have collapsed like a house of cards.
Despite the ease with which The Social Network flows through its labyrinthine storyline, Fincher is actually stretching out quite a bit from his usual style of filmmaking. The director is best known as the visual stylist behind the rich worlds of Benjamin Button, Fight Club, and Se7en, all of which thrived on full-bodied, gooey atmosphere and innovative camera techniques. But with The Social Network he focuses his camera with an intimate touch on human nature and pointed social commentary … made from Sorkin’s rapid-fire dialogue that often cuts like a knife. Sorkin is firing without removing his finger from the trigger. Fincher never misses a beat. It’s a beautiful thing to watch these two filmmakers at the top of their games.
Special mention goes to the great work of Eisenberg and Garfield. The fact that Eisenberg is able to craft a sympathetic character out of a genuine piece of asshole is crucial to Fincher’s grand vision. Eisenberg knows that allowing viewers to hate his Zuckerberg, might very well cause them to turn on the entire film. Even Justin Timberlake turns in a worthy performance as Sean Parker, the smarmy but connected creator of Napster, who Zuckerberg brings on board for his shared vision of the direction the company needs to go.
A fitting score by Nine Inch Nails’s founding member, Trent Reznor rounds out this near masterpiece of filmmaking. It doesn’t take but a few minutes into the film for us to realize we’re not only watching Fincher’s strongest film to date, but the year’s as well.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, drug and alcohol use and language.
