The Social Network (2010)Director: David Fincher
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Rooney Mara, Armie Hammer, Rashida Jones
For the first time in a while there are actually a few movies out at the cinema which I'm quite keen to see. I doubt I'll get to all of them so I have to prioritise, with The Social Network just pipping Ben Affleck's new one, The Town. The critical response to The Social Network has been quite conflicted. Prior to its release it was being talked up as a shoe in for the Best Picture Oscar, then it came out and got good, but not great, reviews.
Mark Zuckerberg (Eisenberg), the founder of Facebook and the world's youngest ever billionaire, is facing two concurrent legal depositions. The first is from fellow Harvard students Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss who claim that Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from them when they employed him to design their website idea, 'The Harvard Connection'. The second is from one time best friend and original CFO of Facebook Eduardo Sevarin, who claims that Zuckerberg squeezed him out of the company, robbing him of his share of the billions of dollars the company is worth. Through these two depositions The Social Network explores the controversial and conflicted individual that is Mark Zuckerberg and the development of one of the most influential websites of all time.
This film made a bit of a splash when it was released because it painted Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in a rather unflattering light. The film doesn't really take sides in the depositions that are portrayed, we are not encouraged to think one way or the other, to see him as guilty or innocent, but rather to simply acknowledge that he does have a case to answer. No doubt Zuckerberg is presented as a massive jerk, but what is interesting is the type of jerk he is presented as. When you go to see a movie about the world's youngest ever billionaire being sued for millions of dollars by people who claim he has cheated them, we expect this man to be a ruthlessly greedy individual, but that is not at all the light Zuckerberg is presented in. Money is not nearly the priority to him that it is to the Winklevoss's who are suing him. Zuckerberg is rather presented as an arrogant and ambitious genius. What he wants is to do something which will make the world acknowledge his brilliance and he did that with Facebook. The fact that it made him billions of dollars was irrelevant.
There were two performances in this film which really struck me. The first, obviously, was Jesse Eisenberg's performance as Mark Zuckerberg. Earlier in the year in my blog on Adventureland I joked that Eisenberg and Michael Cera were seemingly interchangeable. In the few things I'd seen him in he had always played that insecure, jittery nerd, which is why it was so refreshing to see him doing something completely different in The Social Network. As Zuckerberg he spoke with such a directness and assuredness, stemming from that arrogance. It was not something I was used to from him. A really great performance which will see him get his first Oscar nomination.
Here's a statement I never thought I'd say: The casting of Justin Timberlake was a masterstroke. His was the second performance which really struck me. To Zuckerberg and his computer programming friends, Sean Parker was a superstar. He was the rock star of their industry, which made Timberlake such a good fit. He manages to be convincing as an intellectual equal for Zuckerberg and at the same time ooze a charisma which sucks him in.
The writing of this film is something to behold, though. In a time where dialogue in films is dumbing down, Aaron Sorkin's screenplay has an incredible pace and energy. It is real rat-tat-tat, machine gun dialogue. You don't even get to warm into it. The very first scene is Zuckerberg talking at a million miles an hour to his then girlfriend, though for not much longer, Erica (Mara). Of course, this shouldn't come as a surprise if you are familiar with Sorkin's work. He wrote the screenplay for A Few Good Men, as well as creating the TV series The West Wing.
In some ways this film as a whole mirrors Mark Zuckerberg, or at least Mark Zuckerberg as he is portrayed in the film (an important distinction to make as The Social Network is definitely not a documentary). The film seems to be as amazingly intelligent as Zuckerberg, but equally cold and unfeeling. When the main character is such an emotionally incapable individual, and so many of the other characters being consumed by greed and ambition, it is difficult to find a character within the film with whom we can engage and relate. The only two who spring to mind are Eduardo and Marylin (Jones), the legal assistant who is sitting in on the depositions.
David Fincher is a fantastic director who has made a number of very different films. The Social Network, again, is something very different to anything we've seen from him before but it instantly takes its place in the upper echelon of Fincher's films alongside Fight Club and Se7en, and may well earn him his first Oscar.
The Social Network is, at this stage, one of the Oscar front runners for next year. It is expected that upcoming films Black Swan by Darren Aronofsky and The King's Speech by Tom Hooper will also challenge for the big prize, but you can expect Fincher, Sorkin and Eisenberg to be among the legitimate contenders in their categories. It is a really well made film, and very intelligent, if not as emotionally engaging as others.
The Social Network is intended to be a portrait of our times. There are over 500 million people registered on Facebook, over 50% of which log in on any given day. Online social networking has become a key characteristic of 21st century life. This is a film for right now and will serve as a document for 2010 the way Wall Street serves as a document for 1987 or Easy Rider for 1969.
For the first time in a while there are actually a few movies out at the cinema which I'm quite keen to see. I doubt I'll get to all of them so I have to prioritise, with The Social Network just pipping Ben Affleck's new one, The Town. The critical response to The Social Network has been quite conflicted. Prior to its release it was being talked up as a shoe in for the Best Picture Oscar, then it came out and got good, but not great, reviews.
Mark Zuckerberg (Eisenberg), the founder of Facebook and the world's youngest ever billionaire, is facing two concurrent legal depositions. The first is from fellow Harvard students Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss who claim that Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from them when they employed him to design their website idea, 'The Harvard Connection'. The second is from one time best friend and original CFO of Facebook Eduardo Sevarin, who claims that Zuckerberg squeezed him out of the company, robbing him of his share of the billions of dollars the company is worth. Through these two depositions The Social Network explores the controversial and conflicted individual that is Mark Zuckerberg and the development of one of the most influential websites of all time.
This film made a bit of a splash when it was released because it painted Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in a rather unflattering light. The film doesn't really take sides in the depositions that are portrayed, we are not encouraged to think one way or the other, to see him as guilty or innocent, but rather to simply acknowledge that he does have a case to answer. No doubt Zuckerberg is presented as a massive jerk, but what is interesting is the type of jerk he is presented as. When you go to see a movie about the world's youngest ever billionaire being sued for millions of dollars by people who claim he has cheated them, we expect this man to be a ruthlessly greedy individual, but that is not at all the light Zuckerberg is presented in. Money is not nearly the priority to him that it is to the Winklevoss's who are suing him. Zuckerberg is rather presented as an arrogant and ambitious genius. What he wants is to do something which will make the world acknowledge his brilliance and he did that with Facebook. The fact that it made him billions of dollars was irrelevant.
There were two performances in this film which really struck me. The first, obviously, was Jesse Eisenberg's performance as Mark Zuckerberg. Earlier in the year in my blog on Adventureland I joked that Eisenberg and Michael Cera were seemingly interchangeable. In the few things I'd seen him in he had always played that insecure, jittery nerd, which is why it was so refreshing to see him doing something completely different in The Social Network. As Zuckerberg he spoke with such a directness and assuredness, stemming from that arrogance. It was not something I was used to from him. A really great performance which will see him get his first Oscar nomination.
Here's a statement I never thought I'd say: The casting of Justin Timberlake was a masterstroke. His was the second performance which really struck me. To Zuckerberg and his computer programming friends, Sean Parker was a superstar. He was the rock star of their industry, which made Timberlake such a good fit. He manages to be convincing as an intellectual equal for Zuckerberg and at the same time ooze a charisma which sucks him in.
The writing of this film is something to behold, though. In a time where dialogue in films is dumbing down, Aaron Sorkin's screenplay has an incredible pace and energy. It is real rat-tat-tat, machine gun dialogue. You don't even get to warm into it. The very first scene is Zuckerberg talking at a million miles an hour to his then girlfriend, though for not much longer, Erica (Mara). Of course, this shouldn't come as a surprise if you are familiar with Sorkin's work. He wrote the screenplay for A Few Good Men, as well as creating the TV series The West Wing.
In some ways this film as a whole mirrors Mark Zuckerberg, or at least Mark Zuckerberg as he is portrayed in the film (an important distinction to make as The Social Network is definitely not a documentary). The film seems to be as amazingly intelligent as Zuckerberg, but equally cold and unfeeling. When the main character is such an emotionally incapable individual, and so many of the other characters being consumed by greed and ambition, it is difficult to find a character within the film with whom we can engage and relate. The only two who spring to mind are Eduardo and Marylin (Jones), the legal assistant who is sitting in on the depositions.
David Fincher is a fantastic director who has made a number of very different films. The Social Network, again, is something very different to anything we've seen from him before but it instantly takes its place in the upper echelon of Fincher's films alongside Fight Club and Se7en, and may well earn him his first Oscar.
The Social Network is, at this stage, one of the Oscar front runners for next year. It is expected that upcoming films Black Swan by Darren Aronofsky and The King's Speech by Tom Hooper will also challenge for the big prize, but you can expect Fincher, Sorkin and Eisenberg to be among the legitimate contenders in their categories. It is a really well made film, and very intelligent, if not as emotionally engaging as others.
The Social Network is intended to be a portrait of our times. There are over 500 million people registered on Facebook, over 50% of which log in on any given day. Online social networking has become a key characteristic of 21st century life. This is a film for right now and will serve as a document for 2010 the way Wall Street serves as a document for 1987 or Easy Rider for 1969.
In the January 2011 edition of British film journal 'Sight & Sound', The Social Network topped the critics poll as the best film of 2010.
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