"THE SOCIAL NETWORK" ☆☆☆ 1/2
It hit the web faster than it's subject matter. A movie about Facebook was bound to be made. It's a multibillion dollar web company. It's a worldwide craze. It's inception a story about Harvard college kids, guys barely twenty who made something that caused the cool internet-using world youth to bow to their knees. And it's a you-can't-believe all-powerful drama of mania, stardom and thunderous repercussion. A movie to ultimately be considered for Oscar glory, which - maybe before it's release, before the script was written, before anything but a greenlight and a simple, solid title, "The Social Network," were announced - was considered a great movie in the making. It's a no brainer for most. Sadly, I don't think "The Social Network" is a great movie. But it is one hell of a movie.
"The Social Network," David Fincher and Sony's seemingly award's worthy Facebook movie - with playwright/screenwriter-rise-to-fame Aaron Sorkin and a great young cast: Jessie Eisenberg as Facebook's billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield (the new Spider-Man) as his partner, soon-to-be cheated out best friend Eduardo Serverin, and Justin Timberlake as cool, savage Napster guy Sean Parker - is the hot, hip, dialogue-savvy and actor-menacing fast ride of the spiteful Harvard undergrad who launched the new fad social network phenomenon known as The Facebook, the youth-induced popularity and relationship status-fueled obsession it created (and soon to be worldwide ground-shaker), and the many equally mean, nasty and pissed-off Harvard smarties who wanted their share of the cut, or wanted blood, or both; including twin gentleman Harvard elites and crew-rowers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoos (played in double by Armie Hammer) and their meanie business colleague Diyva Narendra (Max Minghella, son of the late director Anthony Minghella), and also Eduardo himself, in two suits against Mark, both wanting large amounts of compensation.
This movie is about business and friendship relationships flaming and crumbling, lost to money, fame, and for Jessie Eisenberg's tragically naive Mark Zuckerberg, his closest relationships, and even his sought after recognition. And that's what's ironic and tragic about Zuckerberg. He doesn't know what he wants. He thinks he wants girls, wants money, wants fame, wants to get even. He doesn't know. We don't know. No one knows. Mark Zuckerberg is the most sadly tragic character of the movies this year. Is he a good guy? An asshole? A good asshole? A guy who tries to be nice, or an asshole? Or doesn't know he's nice or an asshole, or can't even know? Eisenberg does a bang-up job with this character: the fast-talking, juvenile, naive, hoodie-wearing, borderline ass-monger who can't keep any relationship close. And the only one he has to hold, his best buddy Eduardo - the only sane, grounded and nice guy (though not as brilliant as Mark) out of Mark's inanity and the boozy, sniffing party animal/smooth talker, bitch-slapping Napster starter Parker - who ends up suing for half the stake, and who Zuckerberg inadvertently, it seems, pushed out of partnership, and friendship. The movie's first, and best, scene has Zuckerberg trying, and failing like hell, to woo a girl, Erica Albright, in a Harvard pub with his fast-talk and smarts, and even impress her with maybe future credentials as a member in elite, hard-to-get-in fraternity clubs (including the Winklevoos' crew club). This scene brilliantly sets up "The Social Network." It's quick-cuing dialogue, it's bitter feuds, and this girl setting up Mark as an unknown by calling him an asshole. And, after this failed attempt to get laid, Mark's motivation, who thinks FaceMash, a precursor of Facebook, will be enough to get back at Erica for calling him the asshole. Maybe even get an apology. A kiss-and-make-up. It's something we might think is what Mark so obviously wants. In a scene where, in Facebook's early stages, he tries to get that apology from Erica, it just doesn't work. Is this why he took Facebook as far as he did? Why he wanted to get more friends than anyone? Why it so ultimately blew up in his face, where he lost his friends? And when Facebook hit that so sought after, cherished milestone mark of 100 million users, that he could give two shits about it? And why, at the end of the movie, he keeps hitting the refresh button?
This is a movie about the ridiculous rage even college guys can conjure up (if almost how accidental). About the ludicrous, ever-expanding opportunities of the internet. About the absolute insanity that the young (and old) obscenely care about who other people are screwing, who they're with, everyone else's personal preference and personal lives as much as profession, and, of course, the mortal consequences it takes. As smart as this movie is, as fast, witty, well-written and well acted and directed, it gains that as cool as the whole Facebook idea was, as many people joined (millions), and as many dough as it dished out (much more than the amount of users), it doesn't hold to the sardonic tragedy that relationships were lost, and for Mark the most important. That things as big as they are have their retribution. That as fast as something hits the waves, snowballs or grows to unimaginable possibilities, anyone will be ready to sue with a court order and as many accusations as can fit on a bill. Something as big as Facebook doesn't happen without consequence. It's a cool, but dangerous idea. People change in relationships. In relationship status. And in the computer age. Facebook users, beware. Will you think about Facebook, and social networking, the same way again? Will all of Mark Zuckerberg's friends delete him off their profiles, as portrayed as he is here? Will he finally feel the total mockery of having no one? Will this movie be the ironic martyr of Facebook? I don't think so. This move plays it more safe than it boasts. Anyway, all you Harry Potter suing, money hounds eat your hearts out!
David Fincher holds his signature approach for "The Social Network." All of his movies he mostly has a visible hand in it. Like many stylized directors, his camera is all over the place. But he lays back here and lets Sorkin's brilliant dialogue and the cast's terrific, super-quick delivery take over. And Sorkin has written his best script yet, after his great, break-out scrpit with "A Few Good Men," based on his stageplay, back in the 1993 ("You can't handle the truth!"). Sorkin's script for "Network" is just too smart, too witty, and too swift not be taken notice of. His characters, though twisted from their reallife counterparts (but real dialogue was taken from court transcripts!), are whole, and with the cast, ominous. Sorkin deserves an Oscar nod. If anyone in this movie deserves a nod, or a win, and almost all of them do, Sorkin should be the one to walk up to the podium.
As for that ominous cast, Jessie Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, and the more wowing Justin Timberlake, and Hammer and Minghella are also great, hit the rights notes, cut Sorkin's lines with a sharp edge and read them faster than he put them on the page. It might be them, or Sorkin, or Fincher, who made them so brilliant here than in any other movie they've been in, but either way they were terrific.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's upbeat, suspenseful, sad, techo-crazy score helps comment the fast editing by Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall. And that's commented by Fincher's quick-cutting style, no less. And there's his noticeable touch! Zuckerberg's narration, read super-sly, super-fast by Eisenberg, flies through the movies first twenty minutes (added with that brilliant, somber first scene), as the music jams and the editing jumps, through the launch of FaceMash, after a drunk Zuckerberg recruited his computer programming/hacking buddies to help bring the site viral through Harvard campus, including Joseph Mazzello (little Tim from "Jurassic Park," if you can recognize him) as Dustin and Patrick Maple as Chris, and of course, Eduardo, who initially didn't want the site live as nothing good might come of it. And he was right. It crashed the Harvard computer network! The scene intercuts with Mark, Eduardo, Dustin and Chris launching FaceMash with various Harvard kids, doing various naughty college-kid things, getting hold and watching, and letting, it spiral out of control...Poor Eduardo. He might not be the smart business major that he was (he did sign those papers), but he was a nice guy. Zuckerberg, you brilliant, genius ass-wipe!
"The Social Network" isn't that great movie we might have expected, not as perfect, or as masterful, as most to all critics raved it as. The movie was never as great as those first twenty minutes. The characters were maybe not as rounded as we might have wanted them to be. And maybe the movie might have been too quick for it's own good (I did have a hard time catching all that great back-and-forth quip in the first scene!), and maybe Trent Reznor's score (who's music for this movie has garnered a rave and following of it's own) might be too jazzy, too techno. And Fincher might have wanted to bring all he could to "The Social Network." That's one I don't think much of. If Fincher allowed himself to hold back for better of the material, than Reznor, the cast, and Sorkin, could too. I won't hold much on that idea. "The Social Network" didn't need style. It had it all it's own. But style is a dangerous idea.
See this movie, if you had to pick one. It's better than most garbage out right now. It might not be as well shot as most of that stylized trash. And I don't know if it was intentional, for Fincher to hold back on it too, but the cinematography was ugly! (Sorry, Jeff Cronenweth) But "The Social Network" is certainly better. Way better. And it will get those nominations. Oh, you bet.
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