Review of the film The Social Network

It’s sounds like pure bad friction, but the partnership of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing) and director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) pulls quite the weight when it comes to their most recently released film, The Social Network. Telling the story of the founding of Facebook, it uses Sorkin’s breathless, smart dialogue and Fincher’s subtle image making in such a way that one is engrossed without pushing. It’s the friction between the two that balances this tale.

Mark Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg, is attending Harvard. He follows a nasty breakup with a vicious blog post about his ex. Then, after a few more beers, he starts a cruel interactive program called Facesmash, which allows users to rate the attractiveness of female students in the Harvard online network. He receives some disciplinary action for this, but its popularity and structure lead him to create Facebook which we all know was also instantly a huge success. It also garners him the attention of Napster founder, Sean Parker, and allows him to expand the reach of Facebook and his own power. This story is interlaced with several lawsuits that Zuckerberg later faced from those who felt they were screwed out of the huge profits the network eventually began pulling in. One of these lawsuits was by Eduardo Severin, who is arguably the co-founder of Facebook and was the one time best friend of Zuckerberg.

It isn’t a movie that allows one to get close nor does its ending promote good feelings. It’s a confounding film in that it deals with such weighty issues as isolation, friendship, and loyalty with a lead and cast of characters that know little of these things beyond how to turn them to commodity for personal gain and power. The characters here are not having meaningful, deep relationships; they are using each other. Their connections are fodder for whatever that they can get them in upward mobility. It does make a Facebook user wonder about his or her personal friend count and what those people the number signifies mean. Don’t be fooled by the short review of this film you see here: This is one has themes that fester and continue to puzzle long after the credits roll.