The Social Network – Review

It’s interesting that a film maker like David Fincher would make a film like The Social Network, considering his past films. You’ve seen and heard the ads promoting it with a high-praising quote calling it “the movie of the year that also so brilliantly defines the decade“, when actually it’s about the people that defined our lives over the last few years and not the film itself. But the film cannibalizes an earlier Fincher film as if he has forgotten this quote: “You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.” Mark Zuckerberg isn’t Charles Foster Kane and The Social Network isn’t Fight Club.

Technically, the film is a marvel. David Fincher is on top of his game, with some expertly handled camera movements and shots, with his typical moody cinematography, and a edgy score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. If there’s a better looking or directed film this year, maybe it’s from Christopher Nolan (Inception) or the Coen Brothers (True Grit), but The Social Network, in technical film making terms, might be the best of the year. Much as that marvels certain film-goers like myself, to use a cheesy analogy here, we don’t “like” a Facebook status update for the technical qualities of how our friend posted it, but what it is that we decided to “like”. And so with that, technical attributes of David Fincher aside, The Social Network is a film about smart pricks who befriend and step-on other smart pricks, which makes it very hard for an audience to warm up to any of these pricks.

Based on Ben Mezrich’s novel The Accidental Billionaires, Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay is pitch-perfect in terms of smart, witty writing, yet again, as much as it’s technically well-crafted, it fails to have us like anything about these characters, since they’re all one-dimensional. In the film, Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), is no different than Sean Parker, the creator of Napster, who displays an arrogant self-importance. Facebook and Napster are ideas that changed daily lives, yet Sorkin’s script needed us to either acknowledge or dismiss their cultural importance, but it instead force-feeds us this notion by telling it to us. It’s no wonder the real Mark Zuckerberg is wisely distancing himself from this film; every character here is a hollow caricature. I’m not excusing the events that maybe or may not be true, but when the film hinges itself on an arc of Zuckerberg gaining a heart by paying his ex-friend off and restoring his title as Co-Founder of Facebook is a wash. What’s worse is how this great screenplay implodes at the ending with Zuckerberg refreshing the page of the girl (Rooney Mara) that broke his heart and drove him into creating Facebook, awaiting her reply to his friend request, proves the one-dimensionality of the characters.

The Social Network is far from Fincher’s best, which is Zodiac, but it is a technical marvel and should be applauded as such. To be considered a generational statement like an Easy Rider showcases our ADD. What was Fight Club then (here)? The simple fact is, The Social Network is just a good – okay, maybe really good film amongst other good films. It’s overly crowded and needlessly vapid at times, which friend requested Panic Room has serviceable Fincher.

The film makes you feel sorry for Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), but I feel for Mark Zuckerberg, the real Mark Zuckerberg, and I can hear him quote Tyler Durden: “Hey, you created me. I didn’t create some loser alter-ego to make myself feel better.”

Rating: