The Social Network

So it has come to this? A Best Picture nominee (trust me, those critics awards and word-of-mouth will lead to one) based very loosely on the creation of Facebook. Welcome to the area of People 2.0 in which every thought and emotion is worthy of attention and documentation, in which every minutia of their personality and day is available for broadcast 24/7 and connections between people are superficial and tangential at best. This is the time when we shall live upon the internet and Wall-E will no longer be a future-classic of modern filmmaking but a prophetic vision like Network, but family friendly. It is well acted, beautiful directed, possesses a score that I’m absolutely in love with and a wonderful script, but there’s something about it that just prevents me from wanting to jump the bandwagon and sing its praises.

I will not reiterate the storyline in the film, a quick Google search could tell you what’s real and what’s not and Wikipedia can give you a general synopsis, but I will begin with the script. Aaron Sorkin, the man’s reputation proceeds him, can create passages and bits of dialogue which can sound almost like a symphony score, or like a pretentious preponderance of sound and fury signifying nothing. Mostly he sticks the script firmly and adequately in the dialogue-as-symphony category, harking back to days of fast-paced witty scripts like His Girl Friday and the behind-the-scenes snark of Network. But every once in a while a choice will be made that screams of Sorkin’s overwrought tendencies to speechify and fall-in-love with his own prose. Such an example of this is the invention of Erica (Rooney Mara), the “Rosebud” to Mark Zuckerberg’s Kane. There is no Erica in real life, and there is no need for an Erica in the film. She is pointless and an obvious and easy shorthand for why he invented (stole, is more accurate, but we’ll get to that plot point later) Facebook.

The script is heavy in scenes of dialogue debating who Zuckerberg did and didn’t screw over to get Facebook off the ground. The short answer to that is: anyone and everyone. The courtroom scenes are minimal and work mostly as a framing device for the action of the story. It is in some of these scenes where Jesse Eisenberg’s performance really begins to unfold itself as something pretty special.

One could easily make the case that Mark Zuckerberg probably has Asperger’s syndrome and that he’s a huge asshole. Just take a look at any and all interviews with him. He practically refuses to blink and seems to have no basic shorthand or understanding for true human interaction. Like most extreme nerd-types, he seems frustrated with everyone in the world for being his inferior intellectually but lacks any true sense of how to interact, understand, sympathize or empathize with them. Perhaps this is why he never fell into the traps of fame and fortune at a young age, he doesn’t understand them. He really did freeze out and block out his best friend from the company. And he really did steal the idea for Facebook from his classmates. And he took that stolen idea and created it into a towering monument, a veritable phallic symbol for his ego. If he can’t get friends in real life, if he can’t connect with people face-to-face, then he’ll bring them to him in a language and area that he understands. (This is why the Erica character seems entirely superfluous and unnecessary, that and the already rampant misogyny.) He’s an unlikable choice for your main character, but Eisenberg makes all of this totally watchable. I’ve known types like Zuckerberg, and Eisenberg nails that particular type to utter perfection.

But that doesn’t mean any of the other characters are worth rooting for, not by any means. Armie Hammer and Andrew Garfield standout the most amongst the supporting cast as the people that Zuckerberg threw under the bus on his way to the top. Hammer portrays the Winklevoss twins and manages to create two distinct personality types that can function as a solid unit. If you’ve ever interacted with twins you’ll know what I’m talking about. And Garfield is Zuckerberg’s only friend who puts up the money to make the site and then sees his shares dwindle into nothing before being completely frozen out as the site goes global. They deserve sympathy for being royally screwed out of a multi-million (now billion) dollar idea, which they each clearly had some hand in laying the groundwork for. But they’re not terribly likeable. The Winklevi, as they’re acerbically referred to, offer both their fair share of laughs and sardonic wit, and the biggest bit of extraneous sequences. Especially their rowing scene on the Thames which I guess was supposed to showcase them being edged out of another of life’s little competitions while a remixed version of “Hall of the Mountain King” plays. Their extended slow-mo rowing and barely-there loss don’t neatly tie up dramatically, but left me asking “Why?”

And Justin Timberlake continues his winning streak of small supporting turns in films. Here he’s Sean Parker, the boy-king of Napster and an early case of internet-boom millions, who tries to lure Zuckerberg into the Silicon Valley. The Valley is portrayed as a den of sin and excess, which may be true for one of the businesses in that area, but I don’t see computer programming nerds living it up like this. The plethora of female-skin on display is partially to be expected, but the few female characters given any kind of a voice are barely drawn and sketched in. Erica is probably one of the only likeable people in the movie, but she’s out after the first scene and only returns for the briefest of cameos. We feel sympathy for having to endure the cruel barbs that come her way at the beginning and enjoy how ruthlessly she rejects Zuckerberg. Then she’s gone. And he assassinates her character online and an ugly misogyny streak comes out in the film. Brenda Song is your stereotypical crazy-girlfriend type, and Rashida Jones as a lawyer, the other likeable character, is a barely drawn afterthought. Jones’ lawyer exists more to give advice and deliver exposition then she is to be a character of any real weight or merit.

But Fincher always makes things visually interesting and keeps the pace moving very briskly. He can create a sense of urgency in something as painfully dull and painstakingly complicated as computer coding. And this is only his eighth film. And Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross deserve the Oscar this year for their score which combines classical and electronic sounds into something positively new and exciting. I rarely notice scores in films, but this one continually stood out to me. That should tell you of its power.

I’m unsure of this truly is the Best Picture of the year. I saw it shortly after it came out and the more I think about it the more I think that it’s just a very good, well-made character study. There’s an element of a zeitgeist relevancy to today, but I don’t consider myself a People 2.0, maybe a People 1.5.