Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
10/3/10
Like
most of you, I'm on Facebook. At its best, the ubiquitous social
networking site is a true stroke of Internet age genius, allowing us to
follow the life narratives of people who come and go from our presence
and to turn acquaintances into friends by learning about common ground
that would never come up in day-to-day conversation. At its worst,
it's a stage to portray the worst parts of ourselves to an audience:
sharing our drama, humiliation and vindictiveness with anyone who was ever
willing to fit us under their loose definition of “friend”. But in
between, it's mostly a device to fill the emptiness of a modern age where
true friends are hard to come by, a way to feel more connected to our fellow
humans than we really are. Selling that feeling is huge, huge business
that's made co-founder Mark Zuckerberg the world's youngest billionaire.
There's no way you get that rich that young without climbing over a few
people, and Zuckerberg has settled at least two major lawsuits from parties
who claimed to have been cheated out of their share of this Big Idea.
The Social Network, David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin's adaptation
of Ben Mezrich's book "The Accidental Billionaires", uses this litigation
as an opportunity to tell the tale of Facebook's founding through a prism
of slights and animosity that illuminates not just the people involved
but all of us who found their creation so addictive. Another bullet
point on Fincher's amazing resume, Network is an Internet Age Citizen
Kane good enough not to be embarrassed by the comparison. Powered
by a revelatory lead performance by Jesse Eisenberg, this is a funny, tragic
story of the way neither a million dollars nor a million “friends” will
buy you happiness, not that it stops any of us from trying.
Harvard
student Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is having drinks at a Cambridge
bar with his girlfriend Erica Albright (Rooney Mara). He rambles
on and on about his desperation to get into one of Harvard's elite clubs
and insults her again and again until she breaks up with him. In
an alcohol-fueled rage, he returns to his dorm room and blogs every cruel
thought he can muster about her, then is struck by an idea. He will
hack into the various “facebooks” of the Harvard dorms and steal pictures
of all the school's girls. Using an algorithm developed by his friend
Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), he creates Facemash.com, which asks
users to rate which of two side-by-side pictures is more attractive.
The site gets 22,000 hits in one hour (4 am) and crashes the Harvard servers.
Zuckerberg is placed on academic probation and hated by every woman on
campus, but he has made himself known and attracts the attention of twin
brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Arnie Hammer in a dual role) and
their friend Divya Narendra (Max Minghella). They have an idea for
a website akin to MySpace or Friendster, only with a layer of exclusivity
because only Harvard students would be allowed to join. Mark agrees
to help with programing and strings them along for a month and a half while
soliciting Eduardo's financial help to start developing his own exclusive
social networking site called Thefacebook.com. Mark is CEO, Eduardo
CFO, and when The Facebook goes online, it's an instant hit. Soon
they're meeting girls and gaining regional fame, but Mark's fire burns
for more. He rebuffs Eduardo's desire to sell ad space and comes
to prefer the advice of Sean Palmer (Justin Timberlake), the broke Napster
founder who seeks them out and seeks to gravy train the phenomenon he renames
Facebook. As it grows and grows, the Winklevoss/Narendra group sues,
and because this has all been recounted by the parties under deposition,
we know Eduardo will soon follow. All this means little to Mark,
whose motives in crushing one ally after another remain hard to understand...
in part because they're so simple.
The
real-life Zuckerberg has been on a year-long public relations and charitable
works campaign hoping to mitigate The Social Network's impact on
his image. Good luck. Eisenberg is, and likely always will
be Zuckerberg for pretty much anybody who sees this movie, because whoever
the real-life figure is, this is one unforgettable character. Mark
is a borderline Asperger's Syndrome case, seemingly incapable of knowing
what to say or do in any social situation but utterly brilliant as a programmer
and a master of how to use the Internet to bring everyone down to his own
social level. His inappropriate, egomaniacal pronouncements are consistently
hilarious, but Eisenberg is a whole lot more than some amusingly bitter
nerd. Sorkin's script lays out, one by one, the slights that drive
him, and it becomes clear that while he's plowing silently forward, this
is a guy who gets and executes great ideas because he wants the power to
make power miserable. But he's so pitifully empty, it's hard not
to feel just a little bit sorry for him.
The
movie is jam-packed with great performances. Garfield is perfectly
pitched for the material. He's kinda a funny doofus, but doesn't
overplay even a little, allowing us to like him but also see that he's
so far in over his head in these shark-infested waters that nothing can
end well for him. Timberlake is a revelation all his own, making
Parker Zuckerberg's totally unsympathetic mirror image. This is a
guy whose talent is for screwing people over, whether it was the music
industry he brought down for no personal gain with Napster or the people
he crawls over to get to Mark's side at Facebook. Timberlake the
pop star was always a triumph of blustery cool over talent, and it's no
surprise to see him play a villainous character with the same attributes.
What IS a surprise is to see him play that character as someone trying
to bluster over the fact that he is every ounce scum and a loser.
It's funny that Parker hasn't come out against the movie the way Zuckerberg
has, but if he's anything like Timberlake plays him, maybe he likes people
seeing him that way. Rashida Jones has some great scenes as the one
member of Zuckerberg's legal team who speaks honestly with him and David
Selby is a salty delight as the Winkelvoss' lawyer.
Hammer,
who'd caught my eye in a great recurring role on the slightly less great
TV series Reaper, is really amazing as the Winkelvoss twins.
The technology that allows him to seemlessly play off himself is impressive,
and I was sure the end credits would reveal him to have a previously unknown
twin (Josh Pence was used as a body double for Tyler in some scenes).
But the performance only feeds that belief because, while the Brothers
Winkelvoss have very different personalities, he plays them as only about
5% different in demeanor and body language, which oddly makes them seem
much more like different people than if he went the normal route and tried
harder to differentiate the two performances. Mara, one of the movie's
many rising stars, makes a huge impression in the grabber of an opening
sequence. While she appears a couple more times, it's that scene
that allows us to see how she could loom so large over all that follows,
right down to a heartbreaking final scene that makes the Kane comparisons
complete.
While
I just couldn't bear the thought of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
and as such skipped it, I have loved every other one of David Fincher's
movies to pieces, and he's my favorite active director. While there
isn't really a signature look or tone to his work, what you do get is a
signature quality, a commitment to having great performances in even tiny
roles, a slick professionalism that tells you every shot got full consideration,
and a total willingness to make the movie the script demands, rather than
the other way around. And Sorkin has provided him with a great script,
full of quotable dialog and, just like Kane, a ton of bitter laughs.
Sorkin really understands the human impulses that make Facebook so popular,
and the movie quietly makes Zuckerberg Facebook Incarnate without beating
us over the head with it. The score, by rockers Trent Reznor and
Atticus Ross, is tremendous, even managing to work in an exciting spin
on Edvard Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King, Opus 23. And
the cinematography by Jeff Cronenwenth (whose work on Fincher's Fight
Club is some of the best I've ever seen) absolutely glows.
The
Social Network is a great, great movie, one that speaks to both the
human condition and times in which it's made while sketching a number of
unforgettable characters and packing in amazing performances. It's
unquestionably one of the best films of the year, and I can't wait to post
a link to this review on my Facebook. Then, I'm pretty sure my Farmville
crops will need to be harvested. Thanks, Mark Zuckerberg... I think. |
