Exclusive No More: Review of The Social Network

It was the Summer of 2006, and I found myself in the position of needing to sublet a room in my apartment.  After an impassioned plea on his behalf, I rented the room to a young college grad who had just moved to LA in the hopes of working for an agency.  The arrangement was congenial enough, and when he found himself permanent housing, I suggested that we stay in touch. 
"Are you on MySpace?" I asked, not knowing that I had just betrayed my age.
"I'm on facebook", he corrected me.
The message was simple.  facebook was cool, and I was not.

One of the reasons that David Fincher's new film, The Social Network, has touched a nerve with so many people is that all kids want to be cool, and facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was no exception.   The opening scene of the film lays out the dramatic stakes in no uncertain terms.  Unaware that he's about to be dumped, Zuckerberg condescendingly informs his girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara) that she'll have the privilege of being his date when he's invited to join one of Harvard's most exclusive final clubs.   Wanting more than just to be arm candy around Cambridge, she informs him that their relationship is over.  When Zuckerberg reacts with anger and confusion, she elaborates.  She wants it made perfectly clear that she's not leaving him because she's a nerd.  She's leaving him because he's an asshole. End of story.

Except for Mark, it's just the beginning.  He returns to his dorm room, and drunkenly blogs some very mean things about his ex, and then uses his computer brilliance to hack his way into the Harvard computer system,  where he creates a program called the "facemash" where students can rank the attractiveness of their female classmates.  That's right.  According to The Social Network, the only thing that separated the early facebook from sites like "hot or not.com" is that all the women involved were Ivy League.  Like all great ideas, things evolved.  The facemash became the facebook, which eventuallyjettisoned its definite article to become the ubiquitous site we know today. 

On paper, The Social Network seems an unlikely candidate to be an end of the year awards front-runner.  David Fincher has a distinctively dark vision, which has resulted in an output that's exciting, but uneven.   Fortunately, his style meshes well with the machiavellian workings on display here, and the end result is more Tyler Durden than Benjamin Button.  Whether this would mesh with the aesthetic of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who had a smash with The West Wing and crashed and burned with Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip, was anybody's guess.   Add an eclectic cast which leans heavily on Justin Timberlake and a story which attempts on examine the incredibly volatile world of the internet, and you have a project not without risk.

But everyone's at the top of their game here, and The Social Network turns out to be a thilling examination of an intriguing twenty first century tale. Jesse Eisenberg somehow manages to make the facebook founder's maneuverings understandable, if not exactly endearing, and Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake make excellent adversaries.  Sorkin also acquits himself well, turning in a tight but nuanced adaptation of Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires without sacrificing his fast paced pithy dialogue.  Add in a subtly menancing score from Trent Reznor, and the film appears formidable indeed.

One of the ironies on display is that in designing a site that's all about connecting with people, a site that made him rich beyond dreams of avarice, Mark Zuckerberg forces out the one true friend he has.  Edward Saverin (Andrew Garfield), who helped Zuckerberg launch facebook with a modest, but important investment on the ground floor, finds himself pushed aside in favor of the more charismatic Sean Parker (Timberlake).  Parker comes sniffing around facebook when his own internet venture, Napster goes under.  In spite of a business track record that's shaky at best, Parker talks a good game, and he effortlessy exploits Zuckerberg's insecurities until he finds himself owning nearly 10 pecent of the company.  Meanwhile, Edward trusts that his friend will do the right thing, and finds himself having to sue his friend to get what he deserves.

The biggest irony, of course, is that in 2010 facebook is the farthest thing from cool.  It has long since given up any pretense of exclusivity, and everyone from your mom to your local Subway has a page.  It has been the subject of multiple lawsuits over privacy concerns, and it's a multi billion dollar concern which allows advertisers to salivate over the oceans of demographic information gushing from its users.

The Social Network has drawn more comparisons to Citizen Kane than any modern film in memory.  While it's not hard to see the parallels, it's also more than a little difficult to see Mark Zuckerberg as a tragic figure. Orson Welles begins and ends Kane with death, with Charlie Kane clinging desperately to memories of his youth; Fincher's film gives us a character who's changed the world with his whole life still ahead of  him.

In real life, Zuckerberg has been making the talk show rounds in a slightly defensive, but mostly good natured fashion. The world's youngest billionaire obviously knows a mountain of free publicity when he sees it, and ultimately the film doesn't exactly make him look bad.  He also just announced that he was donating $100 million to aid Newark public schools, which puts him in a way more exclusive club than the ones he craved at at Harvard.