REVIEW: The Social Network

I'll be honest: after seeing The Social Network last night, there's a part of me that couldn't help but feel a bit dirty when I logged into Facebook this morning. Granted, it was an incredibly small part of me that was almost instantly ignored by the much larger, more narcissistic part of me that doesn't care about anything but myself, but there was perhaps a second where I paused to consider the shady origins of the social networking site that I was about to enter. Of course, then I remembered that the view of these origins that I had been presented with was almost certainly completely false, but it is a testament to the effectiveness of the film that I would even stop to think about it.

Written by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, A Few Good Men) and directed by David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club), and based on Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires, The Social Network tells the (largely fictitious) story of Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook, and his meteoric rise to wealth and power, along with the legal troubles that accompanied that rise. Zuckerberg is portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland, Zombieland) as a borderline sociopath; a man who has a goal in mind and cares nothing for the friends and enemies that he abandons along the way. Zuckerberg is in fact so antisocial in the film that it becomes virtually impossible to care about him as a person, and therein lies one of the prime difficulties of this movie.

Zuckerberg is introduced to us in an opening scene in a Harvard bar that seemed ripped straight from an episode of The Gilmour Girls*. In a lightning-fast, obnoxiously witty conversation with his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend, Erica, (played forgettably by Rooney Mara--and that's not a comment on her abilities as an actor, more on the role of women in this film; more on that later), he is instantly established as a socially inept asshole; he views entry into Harvard's prestigious final clubs as his ticket to "coolness", and believes that women are only attracted to men who are rich and row crew. Gaining entry to a final club would allow him to bypass the restrictions that he believes have been placed upon him both by his physical abilities (or lack thereof) and his financial situation. Predictably, Erica breaks up with him after he claims that she obviously doesn't need to study because she goes to BU, and in case any viewers hadn't picked up on it yet, she makes Zuckerberg's characterization perfectly clear by stating that he is an asshole.

Thus begins Zuckerberg's road to the creation of Facebook, according to Sorkin. In a drunken fury, Zuckerberg blogs his hateful feelings about Erica while simultaneously creating Facemash.com, a supposed precurser to Facebook that allows visitors to rank various female students. This theme of using the Internet as some a ticket to sexual satisfaction is a theme that recurs throughout the entire film, and is one of the reasons that I felt dirty using Facebook this morning. Sorkin's tale would have us believe that Facebook was created almost exclusively so that loner guys would be able to meet and eventually have sex with women; a sort of online dating service. Regardless of what it eventually becomes, Zuckerberg (at least the film version of Zuckerberg) creates the site because he believes that it will make him "cool", and that this coolness will bring him the social standing (and the women) that he so desires. He is instantly enthralled by Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the former co-founder of Napster, who is living the high life--women, booze, drugs; Zuckerberg sees this and believes that he can achieve the same status, while ignoring the fact that his personality would never allow it. He has absolutely no respect for anyone else; even his best friend Eduardo (Andrew Garfield) is unable to get close to him.

The film flips back and forth between courtroom scenes in which Zuckerberg is being sued by friend and foe alike and the events leading up to the lawsuits, and the transitions between these scenes are handled seamlessly. I was initially hesitant about this tactic (as I think the flashback technique has been done to death), but it helps avoid a second half of the film that would otherwise be completely comprised of people sitting in a courtroom reading accusations against Zuckerberg while he doodles on a notepad and stares out the window.

The casting in this film is phenomenal. Eisenberg is fantastic as Zuckerberg, and despite what some of the friends that I saw this movie with think, I believe that this could be the start of a very strong career for this young actor. He played the lovable loser in Zombieland and Adventureland and in this film we get to see a darker side of him. He doesn't have to be the good guy; he can play a perfectly convincing asshole as well. Andrew Garfield, who will be the next Peter Parker in the upcoming Spider-man reboot, was excellent as Eduardo Saverin, bringing the film an emotional base and giving the viewer someone to cheer for, even though we know that things are unlikely to work out for him. Justin Timberlake has proven himself to be a perfectly capable actor in the past (even though Alpha Dog was terrible, he was pretty good in it), and he plays Sean Parker's mix of sleaze and passion perfectly (although I did think the eventual development of his character was a bit heavy-handed). Armie Hammer, playing both Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (identical twins who accuse Zuckerberg of stealing their idea for an exclusive social networking website) brings some much-needed comic relief to the film, while still managing to be convincing opponents for Zuckerberg.

One of the biggest issues with the film was its portrayal of women. Rashida Jones' Marylin, one of Zuckerberg's lawyers, and Rooney Mara's Erica are the closest things we get to sympathetic female characters, and even then they appear to only be there to explicitly point out to both Zuckerberg and the audience his character flaws. Every other woman in the film is either a sex object or a complete bitch, and one has to wonder why Sorkin would write his female characters this way. A side plot about Eduardo's girlfriend adds absolutely nothing to the film, and seemed completely out of place (in fact it was downright confusing, as it came out of nowhere). The exclusive Phoenix S-K Club, to which Eduardo will likely gain admittance, throws parties in which girls play strip poker and dance on tables in their lingerie for the amusement of the club members. An intern at Facebook is introduced, seeming to be a future love interest for Zuckerberg, only to be entirely marginalized in the next scene. Given that women seem to be in large part the impetus for creating the site, it seems odd that they would be portrayed so shallowly in the film.

The film strays from its main plot a number of times into scenes that seem unnecessary (a lengthy scene in which the "Winklevyi" row in a race on the Thames looks like it is taking place in a toy set and makes little-to-no sense in the greater plot), and it is in these scenes where The Social Network is at its weakest. The film wants to give us a compelling back story to one of the most famous Internet moguls in history, but part of the problem in doing this is that we already know the ending. Zuckerberg is a billionaire. Yes, he's been sued by half of his former friends and business partners, but in the end we know he ends up on top. The task that Sorkin and Fincher have had to tackle is giving us a reason to care. Have they succeeded? I can't help but answer "meh...kind of".

The ending scene, while trying to be poignant and emotional, comes off instead as anti-climactic and ham-fisted. Zuckerberg started off as a dick, he was a dick throughout the entire film, and he's still a dick at the end. You're not going to convince me that a five-minute chat with Karen from The Office is going to make him see the error of his ways and turn over a new leaf; he's probably going to be a dick tomorrow too, so why should I care whether or not he ends up happy? The bottom line is that I don't. I wanted to see Eduardo and maybe Erica end up happy, but other than that there weren't really any characters in this film that I cared about. I certainly enjoyed many of them, but at the end of the day this film was about Zuckerberg, and since Zuckerberg is portrayed as an asshole, I don't want to see him end up happy, and I'm left feeling somewhat deflated. Who was I supposed to root for? Even the "good" characters in this film probably aren't going to end up happy; I know that Zuckerberg is going to come out ahead, at least financially, and so it's hard to invest in these characters.

All of this bitching aside, the movie was actually pretty entertaining. There's been talk that it's the best film of the year, and to be honest I think that may be accurate. Whether or not I liked the characters, there is no denying that the story is interesting and the acting is phenomenal. If nothing else, I'm feeling a lot more confident about the Spider-man reboot, now that I know Andrew Garfield is actually a decent actor (although his hair is WAY too big for his face; I'm just sayin'). While Sorkin and Fincher probably aren't going to win any awards from the Feminist Majority Foundation anytime soon, they have given us a (fictional) glimpse behind one of the most influential figures of this decade. Like him or not, there is no denying the appeal of a character like Mark Zuckerberg (even if it's just for curiosity's sake), and The Social Network has shown us what the course of events leading to the creation of a site most of us use every day might have been like.

* Note: I have never, nor will I ever watch an episode of The Gilmour Girls.