“You know what’s cooler than a million dollars,” asks reptilian Napster-founder Sean Parker to a gawking Mark Zuckerberg? “A billion dollars.” Okay, that’s definitely pretty cool even though put that way makes you sound like a complete douche. Less than a month since the mediocre Wall Street 2 hit the local cinemas comes the true successor to “greed is good” spouting Gordon Geckon circa 1987. Except, David Fincher’s The Social Network is less about the money, though it certainly plays its part, rather it’s about power, ambition and, er, intellectual property law.
In fact that Facebook movie is about so much more than even these classic sources of conflict, reaching Grecian dramatic heights as it tells not the simple story of a website which has single-handedly reduced human productivity globally, but a narrative much more symbolic about how this seismic shift in human interaction was born out of friendship, betrayal and vengeance. It is also the best film by a mile to come out of the Hollywood factory this year – yes, even better than Inception.
Surprised? Why on Earth would you be? Written by Aaron Sorkin proving he is still at the very top of his game, directed by genius that is Fincher, starring some of the most exciting young talent around and scored by NIN’s Trent Reznor. The Social Network’s only apparent flaw is the assumption it merely centres on the website we all love to hate. As the poster says, you don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies, and in the hands of Fincher and Sorkin, a marriage made in celluloid heaven, this makes for brilliant drama and compelling human intrigue.
Jesse Eisenberg, until recently perceived as the poor man’s Michael Cera, plays the world’s youngest billionaire and Facebook-founder Zuckerberg. The Social Network introduces the borderline Asperger-case in a long, opening bar sequence shared with then girlfriend Erica Alright (Rooney Mara). The scene features Sorkin’s patented back-and-forth intellectual taper and although the speed of interaction sets the tone for the film’s dialogue, it is a rare moment of visual stillness from the director, content to sit and observe Eisenberg and Mara play off one-another. It’s a key scene in establishing Zuckerberg’s obsession, social-awkwardness and the fact that he’s an “asshole.”
Hell hath no fury as a nerd scorned and nothing that happens from this point is remotely as patient. Albright effectively becomes Helen of Troy, metaphorically launching a thousand ships having dumped Zuckerberg who then proceeds to get drunk in his Harvard dorm room, simultaneously blogging about what a bitch she is and hacking the entire Harvard network in order to built a website called Facesmash in which girls at the college have their looks compared. It might sound ridiculously dull, but with the Fincher-Sorkin magic dust sprinkled liberally it is more thrilling than zero gravity fisticuffs.
From here the pace only quickens as the film cuts between two depositions in which Zuckerberg is being sued in one by the impossibly Aryan Winklevoss twins (Arnie Hammer plays both with help of body double Josh Pence) for stealing the idea for Facebook and in the other by his best pal and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin (the new Spidey Andrew Garfield) for stealing all the credit. The third narrative timeline is a ‘real-time’ version of events as told by Sorkin adapting Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Millionaires. What is true or not is entirely subjective, this is not a recent history lesson but a dramatised version of events. Ambiguity runs amok and while Zuckerberg is placed firmly as the film’s anti-hero, few others retain our sympathy with the exception of Saverin.
Fincher’s casting is generally brilliant, however the women in The Social Network definitely get the short shrift. Sorkin has acknowledged as much, saying the groups portrayed, whether Zuck and his nerdcore pals or the Winklevi and the ‘final clubs’ (Ivy League future Masons), are inherently misogynistic. It’s unsettling but not out of step with a society that objectifies women and where the internet is the greatest tool ever created for such a pursuit. And while Garfield is solid as the victim, Timberlake surprising very good as the West Coast super-nerd Zuckerberg aspires to become, the show belongs to Eisenberg who smashes it out of the park scene after scene.
It’s almost impossible to count the ways The Social Network works in such a small amount of space. Like all Fincher’s films the sound design is sublime, whether in score decisions of the technical skills in which a club scene on one hand overpowers your senses with its bass whilst eavesdropping on Zuckerberg and Parker plotting the rise of Facebook. The way in which he always finds the right and most interesting point of view for his camera or his jarring and virtuoso use of tilt-shift as the Winklevoss compete in a rowing competition that recalls Hunter S. Thompson’s The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent And Depraved.
Big statements sure, but Fincher has delivered his best work since Seven. An even better period drama than Zodiac and even more relevant to our generation today than Fight Club. If you were to search for a film that defines our first world problems, the brave new world of interpersonal relations in cyberspace, and timeless themes of human conflict, The Social Network would be that film.
5 stars
The Social Network opens in cinemas on October 28.