Review: The Social Network

I've been meaning to review this for a while but haven't had time, so here's my review of The Social Network.

Consider, for a moment, the first time you ever logged onto a social networking website. What thoughts crossed your mind, entering that sphere of information, so vast yet so deeply personal? Who told you to join? Why did you do it? What parts of yourself did you put into that system, trusting that its unseen makers would connect your virtual being to thousands of others like you?

These are some of the many questions raised by David Fincher’s astounding new film, The Social Network. The movie follows Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) through the process of creating and founding the social giant known as Facebook. It is created in the style that Fincher has made all his own, drawing on the best parts of his best films (Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac). It is unremitting in its movement, churning forward through its 120 minutes with lightning speed and mechanical precision. The film, unlike many of Fincher’s previous works, is immune to spoilers, because though a great deal happens, it all moves towards an inevitable conclusion. There is no great payoff here, no last-minute twist. Though Fincher showed in Se7en and Fight Club that he is more than capable of executing these tropes, The Social Network finds him at his most mature, working with restraint instead of shock and spectacle.

The Facebook story is well known enough: Zuckerberg, a brilliant Harvard student, creates a social networking engine in his spare time that comes to be a billion-dollar entity. Along the way, questions arise concerning whether or not Zuckerberg stole his idea, specifically from the Winklevoss twins, two wealthy Harvard rowers who are just perfect enough to be creepy. The film smoothly entwines the story of the past with that of the present, where Zuckerberg faces two separate lawsuits over the origin of the Facebook concept.

Such a story might seem more history than drama, but screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has managed to create a script that his so engrossing that one will barely notice that two hours have passed between the film’s credit sequences. His dialogue is harsh, witty, and arrogant, and is delivered expertly by Eisenberg and his costars, most notably Andrew Garfield, who plays Zuckerberg’s best friend and colleague. His character is at once a sympathetic victim and a helpless obstacle, frustrating in his ignorance of Zuckerberg’s workings.

Technically, The Social Network is nothing short of a masterpiece. Every aspect is polished and seamless, woven with unmatched attention and lucidity. One scene in particular, a beautifully photographed rowing race, captures a sequence of speed and brute force in elegant detail, and is matched perfectly by the film’s excellent score. The music, composed and recorded by Trent Reznor of the industrial outfit Nine Inch Nails, is uncanny in its sonic representation of Fincher’s themes, meticulous and technologically innovative throughout.

Though the film is extremely well-crafted as a whole, its most notable achievement lies in its ability to capture what social networking is really all about. The concept originally relied on its exclusivity, drawing users only through others who already had access to the site, and then only if one had an email address from a member college. Eventually, Facebook became open to everyone, but its allure remains. It is exciting, it is cool, and everyone wants to be a part of it. Therein lies the paradox of social networking: despite its hipness, something lingers under the surface that is somehow vulgar, ugly, ominous. We join the networks and control our appearance there, but in truth, we allow them to access our lives, to penetrate those secrets and desires which we ourselves sometimes do not recognize. In the end, though, we are all too willing to continue. In today’s world, after all, what choice do we have?