The Social Network is about many, many things. The fact that it’s about many, many things is one of the reasons why it’s quite possibly the best, certainly the canniest, film of the the year. But the first thing that The Social Network draws your attention to is ‘giving credit where credit is due’. So to Peter Travers, Rolling Stone magazines film reviewer, congratulations for being spot on when describing the movie as ‘defining the last decade’.
From the second The White Stripes kicks in over the opening credits to the closing shot of a ‘boy’ hitting refresh on his computer, the previous ten years of existence come flooding back to anyone born post 1980. That this is achieved by two (almost) 50 year old’s (Fincher and Sorkin) is just one of The Social Network’s remarkable achievements.
Harvard 2003. Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is dumped by his girlfriend for being, “an asshole”. In the quickest ‘proving someone right’ move in modern history Mark is on the internet within minutes telling anyone reading how she pads her bra and how her family changed their name for ‘status’ reasons. Not quite fulfilling his asshole quota for the evening he then goes on to start a website that compares girls on campus. It receives 22,000 hits in two hours. The reason for its success; it was people, people knew.
From such lowly beginnings great multi-billion-dollar companies are born and over the course of The Social Network we see just how Mark, his best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), the Winklevoss twins and Justin Timberlake (sorry, Napster founder Sean Parker) all played a part in creating and promoting Facebook, the biggest thing to hit the internet since uncovered boobies.
On the surface, this is what The Social Network is about. The founding of Facebook. But it’s also about that former favourite of Fincher. Sins. Greed, envy, pride, and lust all play a part in this tale of what happens when money, status and power leap into people’s lives. No player here is an evil cackling villain and no-one is a saintly do-gooder. The audiences symapthy will almost certainly lie with Garfield’s Saverin, afterall Zuckerberg is portrayed as being almost sociopathic from the off, but there is no question that it is Mark’s ambition and drive that made Facebook what it is.
Using a Rashomon-lite, storytelling structure (or for Facebook generation readers, Hero) we are presented with the ‘facts’ of the courtcase. More importantly from a storytelling perspective we’re presented with why everyone feels the way they do. For Zuckerburg, it’s him against the world. For Saverin, it’s about fairness. For the Winklevoss’s, it’s a question of proving themselves to others.
So it’s about many, many things. And as with many, many things it’s about a girl. Much had been made, pre-release, of Rooney Mara’s turn as Erica, Zuckerburg’s ex, but in fairness she gets about as much screentime as the, soon to be infamous, chicken. Screentime, however, is irrelevant when her character does so much. Like Marla, in Fight Club (the only romantic comedy featuring punching faces into cement) she is the instigator of everything. The extended opening is a masterclass in Sorkin dialogue and both Mara and Eisenberg play it beautifully. Within minutes we know who Mark is. As the film closes whatever symapthy we may have with Mark, sitting alone, hitting refresh, is doubled thanks to Erica. He is us, as we are him.
Defining a generation. I might steal just that.
