CotW: Social Network: ADVANCED REVIEW

Mere moments into Social Network it become abundantly clear that this is a script from Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing, Malice). As Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) discuss/spar on the topic of Harvard’s final clubs—think the missing link between fraternities’ and secret societies like Skull and Bones—the dialogue snaps back and forth at a breakneck pace. In fact, it is so Sorkin, if you will, it can be disorienting at first. Like reading or hearing Shakespeare—while I love Sorkin, please do not read too much into that comparison—it will take most a few minutes to get used to the beats and structure of the conversation. However, when that comfort arrives, the script will hold your attention to the final moments.

Aiding and abetting Sorkin is David Fincher’s low-key, self-assured directing. While Fincher has gotten a well deserved reputation for his stylistic abilities, here he turns in his most naturalistic direction since Zodiac and the film is the better for it. I should stress that the frame composition here is by no means boring or predictable. With Sorkin’s emphasis on dialogue, in the hands of a lesser director the film could succumb to stagey-ness where characters simply talk at each other in front of static backgrounds. Fincher’s compositions, however, are alive and bustling.  The actors exist in the world, not some airless bubble. But Fincher never overwhelms the screen either, even in his montages—which admittedly, can at least be partially owed to the editing done by frequent Fincher collaborators, Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter. Overall, the director shows enough confidence in his final product to get out of the way and let the story unfold largely unfettered by his quite capable visual gymnastics.

Eisenberg nicely captures Zuckerberg's satorial flair

Of course, an excellent script and a talented director can still be undone by a lackluster cast. Thankfully, Network’s players are more than up to the task at hand. Eisenberg anchors the film with a mask of indifference that slips at key moments to reveal his capacity for arrogance and casual cruelty as well as his fear of the possibility of his own ordinariness. He seemingly makes the choice to present Zuckerberg as a sort of savant; I have worked very little with autism spectrum disorders, but it seems safe to say that the Facebook co-founder presented in Social Network is living with one. Having never met Zuckerberg or seen him in live interviews, I have no idea how “accurate” Eisenberg’s performance is, but it does “feel” right.

Supporting players like the already mentioned Mara—who shows up in two more key moments following their disastrous last date—, Andrew Garfield as Facebook’s first CFO Eduardo Saverin, and Armie Hammer and Josh Pence as the Winklevoss twins—who believe that Zuckerberg stole their idea to make Facebook—nicely compliment and goad Eisenberg over the course of the film. The real standout, however, is Justin Timberlake’s Sean Parker, the creator of Napster. Arriving on-screen like the coolest most connected man on the planet, Timberlake slowly peels away the artifice of Parker until we are left with a portrait of a nerd—an asthmatic nerd, no less—who has been working so hard on his persona that he has fooled himself.

Winklevosses or Winklevossi?

With films of this nature, there is typically two questions: how accurate is it and how likely is it to stand the test of time, given that Facebook is less than 10 years old and, seemingly, a story very much in progress. On the first count, I confess I cannot say. I can tell you that while I have not read Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires—the book on which the film is purportedly based, I have read both the recent New Yorker profile of Zuckerberg and the 2008 Rolling Stone article about the lawsuits that form a central part of the movie’s plot. And based on those two articles, there is much truth to be had here.

On the second question, I’d argue that while it is a film very much of the moment, it has a timeless quality to it that makes it a worthwhile endeavor. In much the same way that All the President’s Men is specifically about Watergate, but really about power, corruption, the need for the press, and America, Social Network is about way more than the actual creation of Facebook. The themes of friendship, genius, money, arrogance, and so on leads me to believe that it can resonate with someone years from now, whether Facebook is dashed on the rocks of fad-hood at that point or so a part of our lives it is difficult to imagine a time without it.

Regardless of its future, though, Social Network is a movie to see now. It is smart, raw, and surprisingly funny, told with an acute visual eye and strong performances, and complimented nicely by a soundtrack of songs—including cuts from The White Stripes, The Cramps, Super Furry Animals, and The Dead Kennedys–and a score by Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor (nice work in his film score debut) and Atticus Ross.

To paraphrase a friend I saw it with, if this movie does not end up with Oscar nominations, especially for screenplay, and on several “Year’s Best” lists, there is something wrong with the system.

Positive review in hand, Zuckerberg (Eisenberg) and Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) get up in the club, Tim Stevens-style

As always Tim can be reached at parallax2 [at] juno [dot] com, followed on Twitter at UnGajje, or friended on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=836564484. Please feel free to do so or comment below.