Stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer. Max Minghella, Josh Pence, Brenda Song, Rashida Jones, Rooney Mara, David Selby and John Getz
Directed By: David Fincher
Screenplay By: Aaron Sorkin
Based on the novel: The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich
Produced By: Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti, Michael De Luca, and Ceán Chaffin
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Rating: PG-13, for sexual content, drug and alcohol use and language.
Running Time: Approximately 120 minutes
Website: sonypictures.com/movies/thesocialnetwork
Budget: $50 million
Genre: Docudrama
Release Date: October 1, 2010
It’s more than a bit ironic that Emmy-winning writer-producer Aaron Sorkin (NBC‘s “The West Wing”), who has gone on record as saying he’s not terribly enamored with the Internet, would write a film about the creation of the social networking phenomenon Facebook, which has single-handedly redefined the landscape of social interaction and communication.
Working primarily from The Accidental Billionaires, writer Ben Mezrich’s factual account of the creation of Facebook and the legal fallout that soon followed regarding chief creative bragging rights and ownership – and presumably lifting choice bits of dialogue from court documents – Sorkin’s dialogue-heavy, whiplash-smart screenplay is brought to hypnotic, breathtakingly-vibrant life by the entire acting ensemble under the shrewd direction of David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).
In The Social Network, the chief architect behind Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg with Zen-like precision, is presented as a hyper-intellectual, socially-inept student attending Harvard University. One night in 2003, following his frustrated girlfriend (Rooney Mara) breaking up with him at a local student hangout in the film’s blistering opening sequence, Zuckerberg creates a site that would give birth to the idea of Facebook.
Created out of a need to retaliate against her, the then-19-year-old Zuckerberg knew he had something special on his hands when the site got so many hits it crashed Harvard’s server, which landed him in some hot water with the school’s administration. What he didn’t know – what no one could have known – was just how hungry the public would be for a site that makes personal blogging as simple as 1,2,3.
Enter the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler (Armie Hammer, with an assist from credited stand-in Josh Pence), athletic brothers from a wealthy, old-money family that had a germ of an idea for a social networking site that would be used exclusively by students at Harvard, and who were impressed with Zuckerberg’s work as a site developer. They, along with their Indian-American friend and business partner Divya Narendra (Max Minghella, son of the late film director Anthony Minghella), want to bankroll the endeavor. Zuckerberg signs on but deals with them minimally. Instead he turns to his close friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) to finance his social networking idea, which greatly expanded upon the one proposed by the Winklevosses. When Zuckerberg’s site (then called “The Facebook”) launches without the twins or Narendra’s knowledge, and quickly takes off, that’s when the legal woes and issues of authorship and ownership arise.
Framed around a set of depositions and incorporating a series of flashbacks to key moments in Facebook’s development, The Social Network is at turns a legal drama, a tragedy of semi-epic proportions, and a portrait of a young man who can’t see the forest for the trees because as bright as he is, his EQ isn’t as sufficiently nourished as his IQ.
The performances are uniformly strong, especially from Eisenberg, who merits serious consideration in the best actor race for his work here. He’s joined in that regard by relative newcomer Garfield (who’ll soon be the new Peter Parker in the revamped Spider-man franchise), and singer-turned-actor Justin Timberlake (spellbinding as Napster founder Sean Parker), who are now both front-runners in the supporting actor race. Garfield, in particularly, is mesmerizing as Saverin, Facebook’s one-time CFO and Zuckerberg’s one true friend, who was duped out of most of his stock in the company thanks in large part to Parker’s behind-the-scenes, Svengali-like machinations. Of the major players, Saverin is the only one sympathetically drawn, though Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg does show flashes of humanity in a few, surprisingly candid moments of introspection.
Facebook is presently the social networking site of choice around the world with 500+ million registered users spread out over 207 countries. Zuckerberg’s baby is now worth an estimated $34 billion and at 26 he’s the world’s youngest billionaire, quite the haul for a man who turned down lucrative job offers from AOL and Microsoft in order to attend Harvard and further his education. Though, as depicted in The Social Network, Zuckerberg isn’t so much driven by financial gain as he is by the formulation of ideas and the execution of them, albeit at great personal loss.
Grade: 5 stars (out of 5)
