You get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies
In 2003, on the rebound from a bad date a young, genius computer programmer called Mark Zuckerberg, who studies at Harvard comes up one night with a new website of comparing girls in the different colleges. Within the university “Facemash” becomes an instant hit with over 22 000 hits in one hour before crashing the interior servers. Zuckerberg, is recruited to start a whole new social networking experience by two very rich, very good looking twins called Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss to create “Harvard Connected”. Not impressed with their initial idea, Zuckerberg hooks up with best friend and successful entrepreneur Eduardo Saverin to create a whole new type of social interaction. And thus the Facebook is born.
Sounds like a poor idea for a film, no? Well wait till you assess the pedigree and actually hear what the film is really about. It’s directed by David Fincher, the technical genius who has a pitch perfect eye for detail and also very good at dealing with character and plot having directed the masterpiece Zodiac, the deeply powerful Fight Club and the ultra stylish Se7en. He did however come a cropper with the much overpraised The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which despite all the technical wizardry and impeccable design was pretentious and flat. Constantly testing you for emotional moments to reach for the Kleenex but instead you waited for the passing along of the sick bucket. But his back catalogue surely shows how much ability behind a camera he has. Also it is written by scripting genius Aaron Sorkin who wrote the dialogue driven West Wing, which was so punchy and precise that made the dialogue feel like action sequences. Also his silver screen credits include the intelligent political parable A Few Good Men and biopic Charlie Wilson’s War.
The film is also not about how Facebook was invented and revelling in their genius powers, quite the contrary, as Aaron Sorkin has said “the film isn’t about Facebook”, it is about something much deeper and more thoughtful. It is about the relationships between those people and how the invention of this monster behemoth split them apart. The rise of Zuckerberg is intercut between him in copyright suits fighting for the fact he did truly invent the Facebook as well as legal battles over the financial rights to the company. If anything does not glorify at all, it shows it for how it an easily destroy people’s relationships and interactions with the real world.
The portrayal of Zuckerberg is not one of positivity. In fact he is, as first date Erica says: “an asshole” and he is. A self assured snob who wants to be a part of the prestigious clubs in the college, for the reason in his words: “because they are exclusive, and fun, and lead to a better life”. The character is most interesting for the fact that he has created this massive social interaction experience when he himself is a complete social retard, he has no idea how to be social and make friends. Everything to him is success, nothing more, friendship means nothing to him. That’s why he ultimately ends up in a huge battle of ownership with his best friend after he sells him out.
The part is played superbly by Jesse Eisenberg, a usually likeable screen presence and does a very good job at making a fascinating but loathsome character. It is really a huge vehicle for Eisenberg, who proves he isn’t just the next Michael Cera but a dramatic actor with sufficient range and depth. There is something quite creepy about Eisenberg’s portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg, which has something deeply rooted in his attitudes towards people. Eduardo is his best friend and yet Zuckerberg takes against him in huge acts of jealousy due to the fact he has become a part of the most exclusive Harvard club: The Phoenix, which he desperately wants to be a part of. Andrew Garfield who plays Eduardo is a terrific British rising star and provides in fact the emotional core of the film. He is the only “normal” person within the creation of it, he is more interested in human social skills than PC skills.
The film moves into darker territory as the numerous law suits come into play and how Facebook becomes bigger. There is a significant role for Justin Timberlake who plays Napster creator Sean Parker, who catapults the Facebook into the global territory and beyond the boundaries of the university elite, creating a profitable business of which he is a significant partner. Parker, as played by Timberlake, is the driving force in separating Mark from Eduardo who is holding the company back almost. In the role Timberlake is surprisingly good, he plays a brilliantly slimy character and is completely convincing in the role. But his boundless optimism makes him a perfect partner and his odd business savvy provides the first big contribution: dropping the ‘the’ from Facebook, which leads him in the direction of billions of dollars. At the same time the Winklevoss twins, both played by Armie Hammer, plan to take down Zuckerberg who has stolen their idea suggesting that they: “want the Sopranos to take him out with a hammer.” No guessing, in the end it doesn’t end well on several levels although the main legal battles have been solved, friendships will never be the same.
Despite several huge up and coming screen actors being superb across the board, the true stars of the film are David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin’s dialogue here is just as brilliantly witty as it was in the West Wing. It comes at you fast and punchy, dropping you into a world where everything is lightening quick, it really does come at you and they are full of wit and the jokes are great. It fires at such a rate you have to keep up with it and think over what you just saw and configure the dialogue out in your head, but it is so brilliant you don’t care, you make the effort to keep up with it. Of course that is reason enough to see it twice. Many think Tarantino embodies what great screen dialogue is, but Aaron Sorkin blows him out of the water it is natural but also has a cinematic, dramatic tweak to it.
The set up is very much similar to the Fincher film Zodiac, which still remains his finest work, in that it is recent history in which we don’t know the outcome. The on going copyright battle between the various parties has yet to end, which works so we never fully respect who is the outright winner, there is no one to root for. Which is a very high risk thing to do. Very correctly neither the serial killer film nor the Facebook movie takes sides, it does do some finger wagging and accusatory moments as to who is to blame for everything, but never explicitly.
Sorkin’s dialogue is perfectly matched in Fincher’s direction, which abandons his usual attention seeking visual moments and just gives a richly detailed work that focuses and provides more poignant work in developing relationships than Benjamin Button did. It is very assured and beautifully shot, it is muggy one moment in the dorms and in another it is cool and chilly in the winters of the Harvard campus. It almost looks like Fight Club, only in exchange for punches you have rapid fire dialogue set pieces. Also unlike Benjamin Button, Fincher keeps the pace up from the get go it’s very well formed and never boring. There are never emotional dips, it is edited to buggery and there is rarely a shot which lasts perhaps more than 5 seconds but it’s how you keep a film like this, a room film, entertaining.
It is a risk to go out on a limb to say the film will win Oscars, but I wouldn’t bet against it. I think Sorkin’s script is a dead cert for Oscar gold but it does deserve more. Fincher and his team have produced a film very much for the age and that’s why it’s important it is a film completely in touch with how teenagers have developed into the reliance on the online world of blogging and social networking. It isn’t perfect, but its flaws are so few and niggling that it hardly detracts from the final piece. But this is a film deeply tapping into the zeitgeist of the internet and dissecting its qualities but also its troubling flaws such as the ability to completely breakdown how people behave with others. It is perhaps the finest American film since There Will Be Blood. 
Posted by K. Birrane 
