"The Social Network" (2010) - Movie Review

“The Social Network” is enthralling not alone due to its audience’s involvement in the Facebook but the character of Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) unrelenting towards his success and taking anything, anyone and to anywhere. He is not cut throat but driven beyond control. He evaporates into thoughts and dreams and is making his baby Facebook as his personal war. A war towards his inability to claw the fact of being rejected. More so in being obsessively driven to the idea of being identified and belonging in an elite place in the Harvard University. The movie begins with it and setting up the story has not received such a precision on its character as it does out here.

David Fincher like Clint Eastwood is into respecting a story and screenplay rather than his style. They extract a style out of the words than to create and indicate their presence. It takes a magnanimity in them to do that. In “The Social Network” the screenplay by Aaron Sorkin dictates the terms and the editing Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall ties the knots. Linear narration can only make things uninteresting in this story. It is simple, Mark was already on to something with social networking and hijacked the idea of Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss (both played by Armie Hammer) to a level no one could imagine. The team of this film is not alone interested in the genesis of this movement but to read the man, men and the woman turned this thing around.

As it takes on the background on the legal stories and the origins of Facebook, we learn that Mark Zuckerberg is a creative programmer of great kind whose psyche revolves around source codes. He is unquestionably smart but consumed by the details of his own mind. One night of drinking marathon over an upsetting break up with his girl friend Erica (Rooney Mara) makes him vent out in his blog and then go on to post an online webpage to rate the hot girls. He does so by hacking the directories of the several residence houses in the campus and gets the photos of the female members. This particular scene is done like a chef cooking his best meal with a relish and spice to it. He does so with his best friend’s algorithm, with his permission. It crashes the network due to the traffic and then onto the notice of Cameron, Tyler and Divya Narendra (Max Minghella). The battle begins there.

This is a swift and profound story. Finding those two words in a sentence for describing a film does not come often and easy. Jesse Eisenberg is someone like Michael Cera always on the cards for becoming different forms of Eisenberg than the characters he plays. He plays a grown up version of Walk Berkman from “The Squid and the Whale” and it does not surprise me on how he nails it. He is not essentially a jerk but his motivation obstructs his right intentions of his character. He makes the deal with the devil within himself in the idea of achieving greater things or find a satiating experience in redeeming himself from the horrendous posting about his ex-girlfriend in his blog. His march towards making this phenomenon as a cleansing process in gaining acceptance only makes himself digs deeper and uglier.

This is not a film about making statements. Everything that we know about it are out there but it is the manner in which we see this college kids creating and playing with things bigger than anything this generation has seen. Being the power handlers in creating a participation linking everyone around the globe originates from simple human emotion. During that process, we are thoroughly entertained as well. There is emotional viewpoint and a fair one from the Zuckerberg’s lawyer’s junior (Rashida Jones) in seeing things as an outsider and insider. We see the flashy and impressive guy in Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) charismatic, suspicious and unreliable. And the other part of the suing personalities constantly being asked to adhere to the way they were brought up and the adamance in being gentleman by Cameron Winklevoss is naive, applaudable and in a strange way funny.

It is based on the book by Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Billionaires” and thanks to David Fincher for not beginning the film as “Based on true story”. A fact deviates so much away from the here-say and this taking a literary and media form only adds to the mix. The angle on this man’s mind and his actions affecting people around him is fascinating despite the nature of the back stabbing and the betrayal that keeps on flowing repeatedly through the deposition and the birth and adulthood of the company is an indication that we feel and hurt in any form of communication.

Mark loses his best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) and then universally announce him being the jerk in the process. In everything of these, money is not the factor but the identity is at stake. To be unique and exclusive are the keywords used in filtering friendship. This attitude has taken a shape and form in Facebook and is successful because we are all guilty of it. Now we are obligated to “confirm” a friend of random requests through glances or friend of a friend or the main driving factor of hooking up. The relationship between online friends is the depth of a mouse click and it keeps thinning.