OK time for a change of film after doing the Rocky series, which was rather exhaustive yet fun to do, so this one is about The Social Network, which is a dramatisation of the creation of Facebook and its creator Mark Zuckerberg. So with that let's log on and have a closer look....
So the film starts back in 2003 with 19 year old Harvard student, Mark Zuckerbeg (Jesse Eisenberg) who is dumped by his girlfriend, Erica Albright (Rooney Mara). Mark returns to his dorm where he blogs about Erica and insults her, and he then goes on to create an on campus website called Facemash. Facemash allows students to rate the attractiveness of female students from other campuses, which Mark accessed by hacking into the servers of the other houses and selecting student photos. As a result of this the Harvard network temporarily crashes and Mark is put on six months academic probation. Afterwards Mark is approached by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer and Josh Pence) and their business partner Divya Narendra (Max Minghella) who ask him to work on their project which is a dating site called the Harvard connection, which Mark agrees to work on with them. Mark on the other hand has another idea for a website which he calls Thefacebook, which is an online social networking website for Harvard students, which he presents to his best friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) who provides initial fudning for the project. The site soon becomes popular on campus with other students, however the Winklevoss brothers and Narendra soon find out and believe Mark has stolen their idea, and they approach the Harvard president to complain, Larry Summers (Douglas Urbanski) who is not interested in their complaint.
As the Thefacebook gains popularity on campus, Mark expands to other universities including Yale, Columbia and Stanford, which attracts the attention of Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) the entrepaneur who formed Napster (who was sleeping with a Stanford student at the time!). Eduardo's girlfriend, Christy Lee (Brenda Song) then sets up a meeting for Mark and Eduardo with Sean, who expresses his vision for their company, which Mark shares but Eduardo doesn't and disapproves of Sean's attitude. Mark then moves out to Palo Alto in California at the behest of Sean, who soon moves in with him to help and expand the company as Sean promises to put Facebook on two continents, meanwhile Eduardo is in New York trying to secure advertisement support. The Winklevoss brother however while they compete in rowing in London they find that Facebook has expanded out to London and Cambridge. After this the Winklevoss's decide to sue Mark for intellectual property theft.
However things aren't going so well on Mark's front either as Eduardo continues to show his disapproval of Sean whom he doesn't want to make decisions for the company, so he freezes the company's bank account, which angers Mark. Mark however says he is willing to forget that as he has secured a $500,000 investment from an investor and he wants Eduardo to come out to sign papers. However as Eduardo travels to the new Facebook office in San Francisco, he discovers that his interest shares in the company have been reduced from 34% to 0.03% and he decides to sue Mark. And throughout the film there are sequences intercut from different depositions from lawsuits against Mark from the Winklevoss brothers and Eduardo, which soon culminates into the film's conclusion.
The Social Network as a dramatisation of the creation of Facebook works surprisingly well as on paper it would sound difficult to somehow bring such a theme to life in a way that would fascinate an audience. But thanks to the excellent screenplay from Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher's sharp direction the film works very well although it has to be said there aren't that many in the way of sympathetic characters in the film with maybe the exception of Eduardo Saverin. Aaron Sorkin himself said that he was attracted to the idea of doing the
story not from Facebook itself but from a paper that was written by Ben
Menzrich called the Accidental Billionaires and it was the themes of jealously, loyality, friendship and betrayal of the story that inspired him to get involved. Mark Zuckerberg himself had even criticised his potrayal in the film as a cynical and pedantic youth who created Facebook as a means for people to try and get girls, whereas he said he created Facebook as he enjoyed building things and it was a means to get his creative output across.
As for the performances they are excellent, starting with Jesse Eisenberg who while his rapid fire delivery has a tendancy to grate, he potrays the character if not accurately then he certainly shows Zuckerberg's ambition and desire to succeed in establishing his creation, which would become a worldwide phenomenom. Jesse get's plenty of good dialogue from Aaron Sorkin's wonderfully rich screenplay such as in the scene during one of the depositions, a lawyer asks Mark if he has his attention. And Mark turns to him saying "You have part of my attention - you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing! Does that adquately answer your condescending question?". In another scene Mark also expresses his arrogance to another lawyer and says "Ma'am I know you've done your homework and you know that money isn't a big part of my life, but at the moment I could buy Mt. Auburn Street, take the Phoenix club and turn it into my ping pong room!". Eisenberg also shows Zuckerbeg in the film to have less than graceful social skills, even when he is talking to Eduardo, who in the scene where Eduardo tells him he got punched by the Phoenix, Eduardo says "But it was probably just a diversity thing" and Mark says "It probably was a diversity thing, but so what?". And later Eduardo tells him he got to the second stage of the initiation process into the Phoenix house and Mark says "That's great. You should be proud of that right there. Don't worry if you don't make it any further."
Andrew Garfield is also very good as Mark Zuckerberg's good friend and co-founder of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin, who is potrayed as a more sympathetic character than anyone else in the film, especially as he is potrayed as being screwed over by Zuckerberg. Garfield has several highlights in the film, particularly his scenes with Mark and the depositions where he at time painfully recounts how he was betrayed by Mark and Parker. And Garfield also he plenty of good lines, such as in the scene where he confronts Mark after he discovers that his shares in Facebook have been rescinded and he says "You better lawyer up asshole, because this time I'm not coming back for 34% this time I'm coming back for everything!". And during his deposition he recalls his and Mark's first meeting with Sean Parker and he says "When he finally arrived it was a Sean-a-thon after that and he owned Mark from that point on". Also during the scene where his jealous girlfriend Christy Lee rows with him and he gives her a scarf as a present she says "Since when have you ever seen me wear a scarf" and he replies "This will be your first!" after which she sets fires to the scarf puts it into a bin and tips it onto his hotel bed. And later Christy comes back and asks if he is going to California and he says "Yes! And I'm breaking up with you!" (after she had discovered his Facebook page said he was single no less).
Justin Timberlake also puts in a good performance as the charismatic and cocky Sean Parker, who seizes his chance to get involve in Facebook and guide it to its success, although his partying and womanising eventually get's him into trouble with the law, which eventually leads to his shares in the company also being reduced (to 7% according to the film). Timberlake's scene where he first meets Mark and Eduardo is good where he woos Mark with his entrepenaurial prowess and he makes a key contribution to the company as he leaves the meeting and says "Drop the "the" just "Facebook". Its cleaner". And in his first scene where he wakes up after having slept with a Stanford dorm girl, he tells her who he is "Well I founded an Internet company that let folks download and share music for free" and the girl asks "Just like Napster?" and he says "Exactly like Napster". The girl says "Sean Parker founded Napster" and he says "Nice to meet you" and she says "I just slept with Sean Parker" and Sean replies "You just slept ON Sean Parker".
Armie Hammer also provides an excellent performance as the two Winklevoss brothers, one of whom was acted by Josh Spence, who was a double for Tyler Winklevoss, and Armie's face was superimposed using CGI over Spence's to show they are twins. In their first scene Hammer get's a funny moment where the Winklevoss's outrow their competitors in a practice race and Cameron says "Is there anyway we can make this a fair fight?" and Tyler says "We could jump out and swim". Also in the scene where they meet with the Harvard president and Cameron takes forever to make his point and Larry calls out to his secretary and says "Punch me in the face!". And at the end of the scene as they leave Tyler angrily pulls the door knob off with his hand and says to the secretary "Whoops, seem to have broken his 335 year old door knob!" and drops it on her desk. And when their business partner Divya says regarding Mark "I want to hire The Sopranos to beat the shit out of him with a hammer!" Tyler says "We don't even have to do that. We can do that, I'm 6'5" 220 and there's two of me!". And in the scene where the Winklevoss's discover that Facebook has expanded to UK universities, Tyler says to Cameron "Now I'm asking you for the last time, let's take the considerable resources at our disposal and sue him in court!". And Cameron finally gives in and turns to his brother and says "Screw it! Let's gut the friggin nerd!".
Rooney Mara also provides a good performance in her role as Erica Albright, and in the first scene of the film she argues with Mark when they are dating and she soon grows fed up and breaks up with him. And she says "Its exhausting, dating you is a like going out with a stairmaster!". And before she leaves him she says "You are going go on and probably become a very successful computer person, and you might think that you might go through life thinking girls won't like because you are a nerd. But I want to tell you from the bottom of my heart that won't be true, it will be because you are an asshole!". And lastly Max Minghella is excellent as Divya Narendra, the Winklevoss brother's business partner, who rushes in on them while they practice rowing and tells them "I just thought I'd let you know that Zuckerberg stole our website! He stole our website. Its been live for more than 36 hours!". And during the deposition he talks about how "And Mark was the biggest thing on campus, that included 19 Nobel laureates, 15 Pulitzer prize winnners, two future Olympians and a movie star" and a lawyer asks who the movie star was and Divya replies "Does it matter?". And his best line comes when he asks why Cameron Winklevoss refuses to sue Zuckerberg and Cameron says "Tyler might say it sounds stupid. Because we are gentlemen of Harvard! This is Harvard where you don't plant stories and sue people!" and Divya snaps back "You thought he was the only one who thought was going to sound stupid?!".
Direction wise David Fincher does a terrific job here as he gives the film a dramatic edge and has a great understanding of the story material and in doing so creates a film with vividly drawn characters. The Social Network isn't one of Fincher's more visually flashy films but it still maintains the kind of greenish tint that some of his other films has, especially in the deposition scenes, which gives the film the distinctive style that separates Fincher from other filmmakers from a visual aspect. The electronic music score for the film is also worthy note, which was composed by Trent Reznor (the main behind industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails) and Atticus Ross and it is largely excellent and it has some really good tracks, such as in the scene where Mark creates Facemash.
Flaw wise how does it The Social Network fair up? Well it does have one or two, to start with perhaps one of the main one's is the potrayal of Mark Zuckerberg himself, as he is potrayed as a pedantic arrogant little prick, and as such it is hard to empathise with him, especially as he ends up screwing Eduardo out of the company. Although Zuckerberg is seen to show some remorse toward shutting Eduardo out of the company in the scene where Eduardo finds out and he says to Sean that he didn't have to be so rough with him. Almost in a typical dramatic storytelling fashion it also sets up Sean Parker as a bit of a villain and Eduardo as the good guy and with Mark stuck somewhere in between the two, who's real loyalty is to the company he has created. And by doing that is seems to make a bit of a mockery of the real life facts of the story of Facebook and in a way you can understand why Zuckerberg himself was not happy with the arrogant potrayal of himself on screen. And perhaps Sorkin tries to show Zuckerberg to be a bit of a nerd who has very little social skills and it appears to be a departure from the real life Zuckerberg who give seminars and goes on chat shows to talk about his invention, something which you can't see the jumped cinema version of himself doing.
Aaron Sorkin's screenplay while it is wonderfully written also is guilty of being excessively verbose and you feel that the characters in, especially the Winklevoss's could arrive at their point long before they even make it! This is well highlighted in the scene where they talk to the Harvard president whom even says "Please arrive at the point!" as he's even thinking the same thing as the audience i.e. GET ON WITH IT!!! Another problem is also Jesse Eisenberg's rapid machine gun fire delivery as there are one or two scenes where you actually struggle to make what he says, such as the one where he is testing for new programmers and he all has them drink shots intermittently during their test. And in the scene where he parrots on about how he hacks into the other house servers to take the photos of every students to create Facemash its very hard for the non-programmers (i.e. the rest of us!) to follow as he quickly yaps on about Pearl, Metatags, etc etc. Another issue I have is how can Mark be so stupid as to blog about his hackings while he does them! As the Harvard server network crashes, he has even left a trail of breadcrumbs for the Harvard staff to find out who was behind it all!! So he hasn't gone out of his way to cover his tracks very well has he???! But then again he was only 19 and a bit drunk so hey-ho.
Anyway despite any of that, The Social Network is an excellent dramatisation of the events behind the creation of Facebook and it is very well written, directed and has some really good performances. And even if you haven't an interest in Facebook you might just find you will enjoy it as well.
So on that note I shall leave it right there for now and since I won't be doing another post till either Christmas day or just after, I will wish you all a Merry Christmas just now and hope you all have a good one. :-)
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