Aaron Sorkin
Mark Zuckerberg
THE SOCIAL NETWORK B+
USA (120 mi) 2010 ‘Scope
d: David Fincher
So this is what Aaron Sorkin has been up to? The opening 5 minutes of this film is a blast
of blistering energy, a hilarious comedy satire of Sorkin-written dialogue,
where like a speed chess match it movies quickly with verbal sparring and jabs,
where one’s attention is simultaneously on several things at once, responding
to comments made two or three moves back.
This is assaultive dialogue, where words are spoken with a vehement
purpose and hurled with a furious intent to do harm. This short sequence plays out like the
language of live theater before the opening credits begin and is the premise
for the rest of the film. Jesse
Eisenberg, more mature and confident here, never better, is Mark Zuckerberg, a
brilliant 19-year old Harvard sophomore in the fall term of 2003 having a
conversation in a bar with Erica Albright (Rooney Mara), another bright student
who finds his manner obnoxious and offensive, blind to the views of others, making
it clear to him that she’s rejecting him not because he’s some geek or a nerd
that she doesn’t like, but because he’s an “asshole.” This is the predominate theme for the rest of
the film, as it immediately prompts his wounded male pride to go back to the
dorm, drink a few beers, and in the course of four hours, with the help of a
few dorm roommates, invent a computer template for Facebook, though this
initial version was called Facemash. Driven
by a seething adolescent resentment, while simultaneously making vicious personal
blog entries calling the young woman a bitch and making unflattering references
to farm animals, Zuckerberg spent his time hacking into the database of nine
Harvard dormitory resident computer files and stole all the female photos,
updating the women into a comparative side by side photo contest called “Hot or
Not,” where the Harvard students could pick the hottest between two photos,
which generated 22,000 hits in just the first four hours online before crashing
Harvard’s servers, cementing his legendary status on campus as a geek genius
loathed by women who weren’t happy about having their pictures stolen and then
placed on exhibition for fratboy male appraisal.
What really works here is the level of free-wheeling viciousness
on display right alongside continual outbursts of supreme intelligence, both
signs of a Sorkin screenplay, loosely adapted from interviews and Ben Mezrich’s
book The Accidental Billionaires. Fincher’s accelerating speed however is
especially notable, as the furious pace shows the exuberance of youth like few
other films, where these guys are incredibly focused on their creation, like
the two geeks in PRIMER (2004) who invent a time machine in their garage, but
this invention generates instant recognition around campus, something most
geeks never receive. Zuckerberg
eventually refines his idea, but only after the prompting from a couple of
prospective Olympic athlete rowers, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both played
by Armie Hammer using the latest in digital technology), identical twins who patronizingly
promise to rebuild his damaged reputation through the prestigious hallowed
grounds of their all-male Porcellain Club, supposedly the pinnacle of privilege
and social success at Harvard, if he would build them a social media website
that could connect Harvard men exclusively to other schools around the
country. From this dare, per se,
Zuckerberg on his own, with the help of his roommate Eduardo Saverin (Andrew
Garfield) launches Facebook in February, 2004, a site where friends can upload
their own comments and pictures to share with other like-minded friends, “taking
the entire social experience of college and putting it all online,” an idea
that explodes with popularity. The
irony, of course, is that these two are socially awkward but extremely bright
kids using their knowledge to actually invent something completely foreign to
their own personalities, having few friends and even fewer girls, yet these
socially dysfunctional people invent the most popular Internet site ever
devised driven by a desire to increase their chances with the opposite sex by
promoting a computer social networking site for people to share with their friends,
a particular social commodity they don’t have. In a sense, they create a virtual world, where
the thrill is watching the intense reaction by others while the originators of
the idea remain aloof, socially inept, and forever locked behind computer
screens, which pretty much defines the detached nature of new age friendships,
where one out of every fourteen people in the world has a Facebook account.
What follows, of course, are the inevitable sour grapes lawsuits,
where the success of the website is beyond anyone’s wildest comprehension, so
people want a piece of it, where both the Winklevoss twins and Zuckerberg’s
only friend in the world, his roommate Eduardo, each claim this was partially
their idea. Zuckerberg’s response: “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook,
you’d have invented Facebook.” While we
hear depositions being taken with lawyers in private rooms, where Zuckerberg
occasionally interjects his candid comments which cut right through the
legalese, as he continues to exert his mental superiority even as he’s being
sued for hundreds of millions of dollars, we also see the tragic and senseless deterioration
of his friendship with Eduardo, who fronted the original money to get Facebook
started, enough to hire a few programmers who could connect them to a few other
Ivy League schools, also Boston University and Stanford, but the project
continued to expand. Zuckerberg
eventually meets Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the founder of Napster, a
site that downloaded music for free, who had already gone through the
litigation process with the music companies, so he had a track record and awareness,
as he was also a computer savvy guy who could help incorporate and expand
Facebook into other continents. He
interested Zuckerberg immediately, as Parker could introduce them to some
investors and he knew they should never settle for nickel and dimes when this
idea, which he calls “a once-in-a-generation, holy shit idea,” was worth
billions. His influence and Silicon
Valley West coast connections eventually replaced Eduardo, who kept insisting
early on that they advertise on the site, where Zuckerberg and Parker
disagreed, thinking they would lose the “coolness” of what drew kids to the
site in the first place, so they were inclined to keep the site free from
aggravating and unnecessary pop-ups, receiving hefty investments from PayPal
founder Peter Thiel until eventually Microsoft in 2007 purchased the right to
place ads on Facebook which placed the value of the company around $15 billion,
making Zuckerberg at age 23 the youngest billionaire in history.
The film’s real success is being able to trace the root of
such monumental changes in our lives in just the past few years, and doing so
with complete coherence. Fincher’s
editing throughout is superb, as he seamlessly jumps back and forth between conflicting
information being revealed in the lawyer’s offices which is then seen in fuller
detail through flashback sequences where it all plays out, where it’s hard to
keep track of the timeline involved, so the audience is never sure about the
chronological order of events. This
method mimics how the Internet is used, freely moving back and forth in time
seemingly at random, depending on how it’s being used. One of the more dazzling sequences is
watching the Winklevii twins, as Zuckerberg sarcastically calls them, at a boat
race regatta which is scored to the frenzied crescendos from Grieg’s “In the
Hall of the Mountain King,” Grieg - In the Hall of the
Mountain King - YouTube (2:41). What’s especially purposeful is the way the
computer storyline connects to an international athletic event, and where the
twins are humorously portrayed as notoriously sore losers. The twins, by the way, eventually placed 6th
at the Beijing Olympics for the men’s pair rowing event, but their careers are really
structured around winning a $65 million dollar settlement, a nice tidy sum
which should help solidify any of their financial concerns. No one comes across unscathed in this film,
though Eduardo may be the most sympathetic, if naïve, character, while what
remains fascinating in the portrait of Zuckerberg is the way he continually
relishes flaunting his condescending air of superiority while he remains flummoxed
and dumbfounded by the negative impact this has on others, where his otherwise intensely
shy and vulnerable side remains hidden, safely protected behind a firewall of
new age gadgetry. For every new door he
opens, he slams several others shut behind him through sheer arrogance and a
fondness for humiliation. What is clear,
however, is the frantic and hilarious pace of the opening eventually slows down
when they leave college life for the West coast, where youthful ideals soon become
replaced by hardcore business decisions and personal betrayals, where people,
especially those closest to you, can get hurt by petty grudges that certain
individuals retain seemingly forever. Zuckerberg
is no exception. What’s truly remarkable
is that this is one of the most extraordinary responses to being rejected by a
girl, though who knows, Shakespeare may have been similarly motivated.
