Movie Review: The Social Network

A few months ago I had a dream. We all were at a huge house at the beach. We weren’t exactly living there; it was more like an extended vacation. When I say “we,” I mean all of us. A whole slew of people. I wandered through large rooms, finding it not at all odd that people walked up to me and said short statements. They weren’t conversations, exactly, more like little snippets of fact or opinion: what their kids were doing, what they thought about a TV show, how the Starbucks barista got their order wrong. A buddy of mine from college (Hi, Mike Everson) handed me a quiz, written on paper, for me to fill out, but I decided not to do so. I wandered into the kitchen where a rocker friend of mine (Hi, Christian Josi) was searing tuna for a gourmet meal. Some of us gathered around to watch.

It was at that moment that I realized I was inside Facebook.

How a little website created to connect college co-eds developed into a mega-power that reshapes the very way our brain works is the subject of a new film “The Social Network.”

Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), a student at Harvard, is having mixed success at school. He’s brilliant, so the studies aren’t the problem, but he feels excluded from the exclusive clubs, the right sports teams, and the general social life of the school. He resents that handsome, rich WASPs have life served to them on a platter while less rich, awkward Jewish boys like him get the social crumbs. He’s also a little proud to be an outsider and considers himself above the social networking that is shaping these future leaders.

That’s why it’s so ironic that he builds on the ideas of the Winklevoss twins (both played by Armie Hammer) to create Facebook and redefine the term “social networking.” With the financial help of his one friend Eduardo (Andrew Garfield), he launches Facebook. It grows quickly and attracts the attention of Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the founder of Napster who can only be described as a dotcom playboy.

It’s not long before Zuckerberg has alienated everyone around him and faces lawsuits from the Winklevoss twins and his one-time friend Eduardo. How bad can it be, though? Not only has Zuckerberg become the youngest billionaire on earth, but he’s created something that has changed the way people think and communicate.

Three factors make this movie great. A fantastic script by West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin entrances the audience from the first scene. It’s funny and poignant, managing to occasionally be both at the same time. Eisenberg (Zombieland, Adventureland) plays Zuckerberg with a powerful mix of longing for and utter loathing of the upscale social environment around him. He wants friends, he wants revenge, he wants girls, he wants to be left alone. In another setting, he might be the kid who sets a pipe bomb or attacks his classmates.

But more than anything, he is driven by the conviction that his idea, Facebook, is huge and important in itself. He becomes a slave to promoting the new world order to which he has given birth. Like the printing press or radio, the information revolution has changed everything and Facebook is, in his mind, the culmination of that change. Driven by this idea, he doesn’t see how much he has to lose.

The real-life Zuckerberg, the world’s youngest billionaire, lives in an inexpensive house and drives an inexpensive car. It was never about the money for him. There are questions about how much of the story of the movie is true and how much is imagination. Zuckerberg isn’t talking.

Aaron Sorkin, Jesse Eisenberg, and director David Fincher have managed to capture the maniacal passion of a man in the thralls of a Great Idea. It is this quality that make the film so fascinating, with echoes of Citizen Kane. It’s sure to be an Oscar contender.

Rated PG-13 for sexual content, drug use, and language, the film has a depiction of a sexual encounter in a bathroom, the girls being just one of the rewards for inventing Facebook. It may be appropriate for some teens. Consider carefully what you want your teen to watch and hear. It’s an excellent movie about the thirst for greatness and the things you can lose pursing it.

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