The Social Network

David Fincher's The Social Network, a depiction of how Facebook was created, is setting all sorts of media tongues wagging. I'll say this at the outset--I have no earthly idea if any of this is true, or if this is remotely close to being an accurate portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg. I'll leave that argument to those who know what they're talking about. I only know this: The Social Network is an exhilarating entertainment, and so far the best film of 2010.

I say this even as one who has never been impressed with the work of Fincher. This is due to the fact that The Social Network is the least Fincherian of his works. There is no sickly green light, for example, and very few stylistic flourishes. He stays out of the way of the story, which is large, and he lets the screenplay by noted television writer Aaron Sorkin breathe like decanted wine.

As most people know, the movie is about how a sophomore at Harvard University, a computer science genius, created the Website Facebook, which has changed how people use the Internet and, dare I say it, how people interact with each other. I'm no Marshall McLuhan, but it seems to me that the popularity of Facebook may be the most significant cultural shift in the last decade, for all the good and bad that means. The movie serves up for us the delicious irony that Zuckerberg, the brainchild of Facebook, this far-reaching social network, seemed to have little discernible social skills of his own. He had one friend, and he betrayed him.

In fact, the entire arc of the picture is an examination of whether he is an asshole or not. The opening scene of the picture sees Zuckerberg (played brilliantly by Jesse Eisenberg) being dumped by a girlfriend (Rooney Mara). He's obsessed with joining a prestigious private club, and makes some callous remarks about how she's just a Boston University student. She tells him that she's not breaking up with him because he's a nerd, but because he's an asshole.

Stung by rejection, he goes back to his dorm room and, in a long night of drunken retribution, says mean things about her on his blog, and then creates a Website with pictures of Harvard co-eds, asking users to rate them on their "hotness." This gets him a slap on the wrist from the university, but also gains him attention from swells at the club he wants to join, the Winklevoss brothers, twin Adonises who want him to program their idea for a Harvard social network Website.

Zuckerberg agrees, but ends up creating his own site. He does this with the help and money of his friend, Eduardo (Andrew Garfield), and their idea takes off. Soon they have garnered the notice of Napster's creator Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), and Zuckerberg ends up dazzled by his charisma. He moves the whole operation to Silicon Valley, while the twins fume. He ends up being sued by them and Eduardo, and the film is told in flashback from two different deposition hearings.

Though the film has a byzantine structure, it is never confusing, and I didn't look at my watch until well over an hour had gone by (which for me is a long time). Maximum credit is due editors Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter, who have taken Sorkin's script, which is probably twice as many pages as a normal two-hour movie, and somehow streamlined it into a film that plays like a thriller. This is true even though, upon reflection, the conflict seems to be about whether the Winklevosses or Eduardo will get any money out of Zuckerberg. This is misdirection, though. We're told what happens as a result of the lawsuits in end titles, but the heart of this film is Zuckerberg's desperate longing to belong.

The script is frequently dazzling, with many scenes that glimmer. My favorite may be the one where Harvard president Lawrence Summers dressed down the Winklevoss twins, or maybe the sparkling post-coital chat between Parker and a conquest from Stanford, who has no idea who he is, but ends up introducing him to Facebook.

Eisenberg has a tricky job, as he has no Oscar-bait scenes to play. He portrays Zuckerberg as something of a automaton, perhaps someone with Asperger's Syndrome. Therefore Eisenberg has to use minimal signals to let us know what he is thinking, and this does magnificently. I think of the scene where he has his falling out with Eduardo, who tells him has lost his only friend, and Eisenberg's face is impassive, except for his eyes, which are vividly expressive.

He is only one of a great cast. Garfield is terrific, as is Timberlake, in a canny bit of casting. I know nothing of Timberlake's music, but from what I've seen of him in other films, like Alpha Dog, and his stints of Saturday Night Live, the fellow has immeasurable star wattage. Fincher uses this wisely, as Parker is a glib glad-hander who knows to grease the wheel but also has lost two fortunes. It's easy to see why Zuckerberg became enamored of him, and why Eduardo mistrusted him. The Winklevoss twins are played by one actor, Armie Hammer, with some nifty sleight of hand and special effects. Hammer is wonderful, but he also gets most of the good lines, such as when he says "I'm six-five, two-twenty, and there's two of me."

It's a tough sell for a film to have at its center a social misfit who comes close to being a villain. No one will walk out of this film thinking Mark Zuckerberg is a great human being (which is perhaps why he just donated 100 million dollars to the Newark school system), but I found the closing image of him staring into the Facebook page of a certain someone incredibly moving. It brought to mind the quote from the book of Mark: "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" This scene is followed by the soundtrack slipping into the Beatles' "Baby, You're a Rich Man," the perfect capper to an almost perfect movie.

My grade for The Social Network: A