Movie Review: The Social Network

This is my first movie review - which is sort of ironic given the post below. A great movie for me is one that pushes the imagination and emotions to its extreme edge such that one is consumed by the experience for days and takes quite some time to get it “out of the system”, so to speak. And every few years, there is always one such movie that is released by creative film makers around the world. The Dark Knight was one such; it took me 3 days of continuous viewing and many days of reading/ talking about it to find peace in the Joker’s outrageous sense of morality. Fight Club was another – a dark, stylish, post modern flick encapsulating our almost programmed participation in a litany of mind less races that have us confusing life for 'stuff'. At the very least, it was a story very crisply told, with great background music, great performances and great direction by David Fincher. His next, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was quite disappointing in that it had not much to offer by way of story telling and was largely a cosmetic celebration of Brad Pitt’s beauty with some great background scores. Social Network is his next where he has finally replaced Brad Pitt with a fairly interesting ensemble cast and is right up his ally in that it begins at the same place of the story of a loner, who did not fit into society due to his many quirks and his spectacular journey of creating something extraordinary that changed the world as he knew it.

On the face of it, the Social Network is the story of Facebook and its Co-Founders Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) and Dustin Moskovitz. It is also the story of the Winklevoz twins (both played Armie Hammer) who claim to have the original idea which was stolen and implemented by Zuckerberg before they could get around to it. However, the film and its script is much more than that. It is at once an introspective look at morality for our time and age and the real price of ambition. Like the Joker, it takes a dark look at the meaning of human interpersonal reactions albeit within the landscape of business, where money and recognition find weight in gold, corrupting innocent notions of right and wrong that are ingrained in simpler academic worlds. It is a fascinating tale of 2 founders of a path breaking idea; one the genius with the alternate vision – the lateral thinker, the game changer, uncontainable and free spirited, driven only by his creation and what it represents and stands for; and the other, the more restrained voice rooted in business reality looking to make economic sense within the architecture of his friend's creative world. The character etching is fascinating and the film never once passes judgment on the right or the wrong - it simply provides enough information for the viewer to work it within his framework of morality - and even if based on some distorted facts, it is largely representative of the world we live in where choices to do the “right” thing are only understood deep inside inside our consciousness where our hearts whisper it out to us with annoying clarity.

Eduardo Saverin was a consultant for the script and from the very beginning, it is almost impossible to not empathize with his character played by Andrew Garfield. He forms the moral compass, the heart and soul for the film as one of its most likable characters; someone who believed in and paid for a promised ride on a magical highway that would soar into the skies; yet found himself deserted mid way through the journey by the driver who found companionship in suspicious strangers along the way that better spoke his language and better painted his pictures.

Eisenberg is outstanding as Zuckerberg, his eyes and his body language convey the compulsions and isolation of a man at the top that is focused on the drive, on taking his paradigm shifting world view of the world forward, for developing it and ensuring all the values it encapsulated and stood for were never compromised along the way. In achieving this, the film highlights the many difficult personal choices he had to make and Eisenberg while giving the character the necessary geek persona also manages to convey the cold ruthlessness, obsessive and defensive character traits that constitute the backbone of his eventual decisions. Yet he is not completely contemptible, his eyes do reflect just that slightest hint of vulnerability and discomfort of understanding exactly what his actions constitute to his friendships, his defiance of money and moneyed peers make him almost heroic and his excitement at meeting Sean Parker, a man among the isolated few that understood his idiom make him endearing despite not wanting too. Rest of the ensemble cast put in solid performances including the Winklevoz twins and the character that plays Larry Summers who is exceptionally brilliant in his limited scenes.

The story is largely told using a juxtaposition of flashbacks on the creation of facebook and the current legal suits facing its founder from his friends and peers – a story where one does know the eventuality upfront but the unfolding of it is narrated almost like a thriller; a story where despite the geekdom in the dialogues, the film manages to have just enough heart and brilliant music to make it one of the more outstanding films of the past couple of years. It is a film of our times that captures the spirit of a generation that isn’t prepared to wait their turn or pay their dues and instead will make the opportunities for themselves or tear it away from the less ambitious. It’s like a gangster film where the young hoods prove themselves to the older wiseguys by doing something audacious despite breaking all sorts of codes of honour. It’s both admirable and threatening, exhilarating and terrifying. However, in this case, the antiheros aren’t left in jail or dead but are left to endlessly refresh a browser to see if an ex-girlfriend has accepted their friend request.