- Is it possible that someone this friendless really invented "friending?" As portrayed in David Fincher's masterful The Social Network, tech genius Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) belongs to that special breed of computer scientist who probably couldn't pass the Turing Test. As the film opens, one immediately puzzles over how he ever managed to land the charming and intelligent Erica (Rooney Mara) just before he drives her away in a spectacular display of social cluelessness. Back in his lonely dorm room, Mark mixes a cocktail of alcohol and bitterness into a recipe for revenge in the form of a web service that facilitates ranking the attractiveness of female classmates. Called Facemash, his program is so popular that it crashes the Harvard servers within a few hours, and Mark's future as a social networking maven is secured.
- As the closest thing Mark has to a pal, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) agrees to help fund an extension of Facemash, whispering caution in Mark's ears all the while. Mark is also approached by an smarmy entrepreneur named Narendra (Max Minghella) and the photo-glossy Winklevoss twins (Armie Hammer x 2), all of whom belong to an exclusive social club that might just be willing to admit Mark if he helps them launch a similar Harvard dating website. That the social club is men-only probably goes without saying, considering that this is a school where the two Friday night social options, brilliantly intermingled by Fincher, involve either watching women dance or ranking them online. That Larry Summers (Douglas Urbanski) sits at the university's helm suddenly seems strangely appropriate, don't you think?
- But that is hardly the end of the story. Unless you're one of those pitiable misanthropes who shuns all social media, you'll recognize Mark Zuckerberg as the inventor of Facebook, a service that now claims one billion users worldwide. You may or may not recognize Saverin, who eventually sues Mark for trying to push him out of the picture, and you almost certainly wouldn't recall the humorous name of Winklevoss if not for this film's images of crew boats slowly slipping into second place. So what happened in the years between the launch of "thefacebook.com" and the modern era? Well, one answer is Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), who is Silicon Valley's version of the bad seed your parents didn't want you hanging out with. Another answer is that Mark and Eduardo had two wildly divergent business models in mind for their new invention. The film's ultimate suggestion is that maybe "friend" isn't the right word for any of this.
- From a filmmaking standpoint, The Social Network is easily the best work thus far by Fincher, whose penchant for exploring weird misogynism in Fight Club and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is surprisingly well-suited to this tale of misbehaving boys and their tech-era toys. The film shuffles effortlessly through time and space in a triumph of editing, the effect of which is further enhanced by Aaron Sorkin's brilliant barrages of cross-conversational dialogue. Jeff Cronenweth's dark-palette cinematography does wonders for Harvard's antique halls, and the soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is a perfect combination of 8-bit novelty and actual human wistfulness. It's even difficult to pick a standout acting performance considering that everyone involved gives some truth to the title of Ben Mezrich's source novel, The Accidental Billionaires, although Eisenberg's interpretation of the misanthropic side of computer geekdom is certainly the film's dominant characterization. My only complaint is that, like so many other biopics, The Social Network is a little too simplistic with its heroes and villains, a point that the film itself even concedes at its very end. One imagines that Saverin, the real-life inside trader who moved to Singapore to avoid paying taxes, is at least as much of an "asshole" as Zuckerberg and the rest of the Harvard cohort. It almost makes one nostalgic for the days when unprincipled tycoons at least had the disadvantage of being crusty old men.
- Rashida Jones and Wallace Langham also had minor roles as legal council.
