Social Network, The

I really hate the title they gave this movie because it’s stupid. They should have called it “The Facebook Movie” or just “Facebook”. Calling it “The Social network” is insulting to Facebook frankly, and it diminishes the impact the company has had on the lives of 500 million people. Myspace and Friendster are dead or dying, and nobody sits around saying “I’m gonna do some social networking,” they say that they are going on Facebook. We aren’t watching a movie about social networking; we are watching a movie about Facebook because it somehow warranted a movie. So for the rest of this article I plan on referring to it as the Facebook movie, if I refer to it again at all. Let’s begin at the beginning.

I cherish the fact that I am the very last generation to not have my childhood infiltrated by Facebook. Facebook came out when I was in college and when it was cool and exclusive to college kids, which frankly it still should be. I don’t know how high school kids deal with it these days, but I count myself lucky that Facebook wasn’t around when I was in high school. I was forced to join Facebook by my buddy Maurice so that he could inflate his number of Facebook friends and look super cool or popular I guess. Either way I have barely used the site since. But I do know people who spend hours a day on Facebook, and don’t know how they could live without it.

When I first heard about a Facebook movie I thought what everyone thought, that it was going to be stupid. Then I saw the trailer. To be quite honest the trailer is more insightful about how Facebook has changed the way we interact than the whole movie is, but I digress. The trailer blew me away. The haunting rendition of Radiohead’s “Creep,” sung by a girl’s choir, combined with shots of the actual website in use was profound. And with David Fincher at the helm I had incredibly high expectations. I will just say that my expectations weren’t exceeded but certainly met.

The movie starts with a scene that defines the character of Mark Zuckerberg perfectly for the rest of the movie. It also displays Aaron Sorkin’s witty, fast paced dialogue immediately. The dialogue Sorkin is famous for hasn’t changed; the opening scene eerily takes you back to any number of scenes from “The West Wing.” But the way the film opens is perfect from a screenwriting stand point. The film over all is intense and crazy to watch. I was expecting this film to be to my generation what the first “Wall Street” was to 80s guys, and it is but not really how I imagined which is good, better. The characters are a little simple in terms of motivation but it’s easy to get past it because of the way their personalities are represented. People have been giving this film rave reviews, and it deserves them. But while this is a great film, the fact that it is one of the best of the year just shows what a horribly shitty year it’s been for movies. And it has been a horribly shitty year at the movies. I saw this movie opening night and I haven’t stopped thinking about it for two days. It is uncannily good, enough said.

Everyone should first and foremost be aware that this is a film, and therefore a dramatization. I’m willing to bet $6.9 billion dollars that none of what you see on screen is real. In fact I can almost guarantee that Mark Zuckerberg is probably a nice guy with a good head on his shoulders and not some creepy awkward nerd who sat on a computer all day getting his revenge on the world he so desperately wanted to be a part of. It’s all fiction. But what beautiful fiction it is. The film is compelling and holds your attention every second. The writing is superb and the directing is incredible. I didn’t think Sorkin and Fincher’s styles would mesh well, but they created something unexpected. There is one scene that can sum up how good Fincher is. If Fincher is anything at all he is a master of composition. There is a scene of a rowing race, in which he uses tilt-shift photography, a process that in still pictures makes everything appear to be miniature models. And the music is probably the most famous part of “Peer Gynt,” “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” This scene which is entirely metaphoric and also a throwaway scene without any real necessity to the story, is amazing and stunning to watch all because of the directing (spoiler alert: I don’t know how he did it but those twins in the movie, that’s one guy; Fincher you wonderful bastard, you’re incorrigible).

This movie is great but don’t count on it to deliver any kind of social commentary about our time or how Facebook was a game changer, or rather reality changer. You’ll get more of that in the trailer, like I said. But as a story of a guy who managed to become the world’s youngest billionaire (that’s one thousand millions, just in case it didn’t blow your mind the first time you read it) by the time he was the age I am now, which is depressing, it is great filmmaking and great storytelling in every respect. The acting is good, not great; it’s not the reason to see it. But everyone does a solid job, they are all believable.

Here’s a fun fact for you: I went to high school with one of the characters in the movie, not an actor, a character. Eduardo Saverin, co-founder of Facebook, was a senior at my high school when I was a freshman. And my friend Mike reminded me that he had a poem in our schools annual literary pamphlet that talked about how much he loved math, and the words formed an equation or an integral or whatever on the page (sorry I don’t know shit about math). So the one scene that might actually be believable is when he busts out an algorithm on the window of his dorm room. It was mind blowing to me to find out that I went to high school with a future billionaire and probably didn’t even look at him twice. Then years later I saw a movie in which he was portrayed. The world is a weird fucking place.