When logging in turns lucrative

The Social Network explores the billion dollar concept that became our collective obsession

Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) earns Zuckerberg’s (Jesse Eisenberg) trust with personal incentives.
Image supplied by: Supplied
Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) earns Zuckerberg’s (Jesse Eisenberg) trust with personal incentives.

Movie: The Social Network

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake

Director: David Fincher

Writer: Aaron Sorkin

Duration: 120 minutes

3.5 Stars out of 4

A film that begins and demands your attention on the prose of its dialogue ought to be great. Fortunately that’s the case for David Fincher’s The Social Network (based on the novel, The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich). It tells a story while never overdoing it, about Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), a college student who conceives a billion dollar concept while intoxicated and hoping to get laid.

It sounds much like the impulsive urges of the boys from Superbad, but The Social Network is compact with characters filled with anger. You can see it as their eyes twitch manically while staring at their computer screens.

Zuckerberg is a computer-obsessed madman. Not a madman with the urge to kill, but one that feeds off his motivations and stops at nothing for that one perfect idea. Or maybe Zuckerberg is not a madman, but a fanatical genius, who embodies not just his own aggressive nature, but ours too.

His best friend and his roommate at Harvard, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), provides the algorithm for an idea that simply sounds cool. As one of the characters says: “Cool is what it [Facebook] has going for it.” Facebook begins as a shallow and immature application: you rate and compare the sex appeal between two girls. Zuckerberg suggests what makes this idea fascinating is not the arbitrary social guessing games, it’s that these people know each other and bringing their social life to the web could be a sensation.

As Facebook becomes a hit, the characters become ruthless trying to survive in a technological domain while living the good life. These, of course are not gangsters, but a bunch of college kids.

Justin Timberlake plays Sean Parker, the rugged founder of Napster. He earns Zuckerberg’s trust through personal incentives: Parker created a brilliant concept to impress a perky high school girl. Did he ever win her heart? Ironically no, but the dollar bills supported him.

Timberlake is in control here; he avoids chewing the scenery when most actors of his type (stemming from the music industry) would insist on histrionic mannerisms to get their character through to the audience.

This could be Eisenberg’s breakthrough performance. He’s been good as the nerdy confounded teen (Adventureland and The Squid and The Whale) and the very character he has meticulously parodied in other films (Zombieland). Here, Eisenberg looks and acts like Mark Zuckerberg, one who may be a smart and cordial man, but due to his thought process seems like a cheap, untrustworthy computer fiend. You become angry watching this character, maddened by his compulsion and incredibly intrigued at the same time.

This is all thanks to director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac). His films are always methodical masterpieces, ones that move by like running water, but never function as choppy, confusing mind games.

The Social Network is about a story that people may dismiss as a potential pot boiler, but will be thankful in the end that they don’t. The Social Network conjures an ideological jungle, where young actors move through the film, reacting and evolving off each other, absorbing ideas, with Fincher never forcing the audience to anticipate that one Clooney-esque monologue.

The Social Network balances a compelling dramatization of Mark Zuckerberg with a discussion between attorneys, defendant and prosecutors. Saverin, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, claim Zuckerberg stole their idea and launch a multi-million dollar lawsuit against him.

There’s a sharp contrast between these two sequences: the main story moves quickly, mostly highlighting the successes and rigid competition. The second is inert, mere banter, but thanks to Aaron Sorkin’s magnificent script, it transcends itself to another dimension—a commentary that Fincher is absorbing us in.

The Social Network proves that Fincher is a great director. His camera moves seductively, observing a variety of college environments. It becomes the fly on the wall, the fastidious watcher of a cult sensation called the social life. His camera is the dutiful eye of Zuckerberg.

He personifies the classic Fincher character: one dejected by the conventions of society, but still insistent to surpass a banal normality and break through to their own unique reality—regardless of its morals.

Zuckerberg is much like Robert Graysmith, Jack Gyllenhaal’s character in Zodiac. Both are artists, tactile wizards, who obsess to win at their own game. Only one of them succeeds. I think you can guess who. Zodiac, to me, was better because it provided more than Fincher—it was 157 minutes long. It kept expanding, until it couldn’t evolve further and left us with fascinating inquiries.

The Social Network, shockingly, feels 40 minutes too short. Its ending is subtle and restrained, never allowing the audience to fully entrench themselves into these characters. When we sense a downfall, Fincher lets go, because there never truly is one. At the end of the day, the lawsuit was “only a parking ticket.” Perhaps Fincher underwhelms in the best way possible. He’s a cinematic virtuoso, who communicates in some of the most interesting ways.

This is not just a Facebook, pop-icon movie. The Social Network is the cyber-There Will Be Blood: it suggests an egomaniacal character, who is bitter and driven towards his personal success—one never achieved in a particular friendly way. Sometimes great directors need to rattle and break the pace to get their message across. And Fincher did. Because as soon as the movie ended, I understood the crazed masterminds who created the Wall post.

After arriving home, I soon returned to Facebook.

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