Saturday, October 23, 2010

The Social Network

David Fincher's "The Social Network" is a scintillating achievement from the opening shot of Harvard Campus, overlaid with a graphic of the film's title as placarded on that iconic, blue Facebook masthead, to it's concluding stages, which are compelling to the very last frame. "The Social Network" is as much timeless as it is timely, moving at a break-neck pace and managing to encompass both the classic struggle to establish clear ownership of a great idea -- especially a profitable one -- as well as being underscored throughout by the bitter irony that befalls the ingenious Facebook programmer Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg), of having written an application that has literally connected millions of people yet himself being so painfully inept socially that he is forever left on the outside. So unfolds this amazing journey and look into the life and times of an American billionaire -- indeed history's youngest billionaire -- who is somewhat of a savant and, if we are to consider him a protagonist -- certainly a dubious claim at best -- likely would be described as a "quixotic" one.

Our story starts in a Harvard bar where Mark is having a somewhat-awkward, somewhat-heated exchange with his soon-to-be-ex Erica Albright (played by Rooney Mara). What starts as a conversation between the strained pair quickly degenerates into an argument as Mark fixedly persists in describing the importance of admittance to the prestigious clubs of Harvard while Erica tries to sway him from what she feels to be a preoccupation bordering on obsession. Erica's attempts to pry Mark from the icy grip of this project are combated with condescending retorts among which is Mark's insinuation that Erica is only allowed in this bar because she slept with the doorman. Incensed, Erica breaks off their relationship then and there as Mark scrambles in vain to salvage it with desperate apologies and pleas. As Erica is about to leave to go "study" she dispenses a one more piece of advice to Mark that seems to stay with him throughout the rest of the film: "[Mark,] You're going to go through life thinking that girls won't date you because you're a nerd; when it's really because you're an ass-hole." Mark then returns to his bedroom, fired up as well as a little drunk, and churns out a cruelly-worded blog, which is written with the intent to destroy Erica's reputation. He follows up this acerbic reaction to having been spurned by whipping up a "hot-or-not" -type website which invites it's users to compare the female students of Harvard, two-at-a-time, and to determine which one is hotter: the one on the left, or the one on the right.

The story, it turns out, is told through a series of flashbacks as we're soon transported to a pair of alternating, present-day legal depositions, carried on behind closed doors with the respective parties sitting across from one another and fully "lawyered-up," as the saying goes, and entrenched in litigious debate. In each arbitration Zuckerberg is forced to defend himself and his fortune amidst respective accusations of cheating Eduardo (played by Andrew Garfield), his best friend, outright, out of millions, on the one-hand; and intellectual property theft on the other. The latter of these proceedings sees our introduction to three of the story's other main characters, the Winklevosses (or "Winklevii" as Mark smugly refers to them at one point), a pair of twin brothers, Cameron and Tyler (played by Arnie Hammer), who row Crew for Harvard; and Divya Narenda (played by Max Minghella), a close associate and friend of the Winklevosses who is equally upset over what he feels to have been the clear theft of the core idea--indeed their idea, collectively--behind Facebook. The cast of this picture is rounded out by Eduardo's groupie girlfriend, Christy (played by Brenda Song, who enjoys her first major role in a mature, feature-length drama) and Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake), creator of the infamous, game-changing "Napster" file-sharing application that invoked the ire of the record industry in the early 2000s.

As we're taken through the film, Mark, at one point, remarks that Facebook is moving faster than anyone could have anticipated and indeed, the audience is equally at risk of being left in the dust if we stop to take a breath amidst the story's briskly moving clip--moving along as such all while it's central progenitor, Zuckerberg, traipses about the Harvard campus in flip-flops and a bath-robe, his eyes beady and darting.

While Eduardo, who is much more well-rounded than Mark and better adapted socially, often acts as the voice of reason to some of Mark's more hair-brained--if brilliantly executed--stunts, the quirky engineer soon falls under the sway of a much different type of influence, the fast-talking Sean Parker, who seems to have an innate grasp of how great web applications do, indeed, become great yet who also has a reputation for living life in the fast-lane, partying as hard as he plays and sometimes eschewing the law in the process.

The plot features plenty of sex and drugs to boot, and hardly needs rock 'n roll in addition (though if you count the non-diegetic scoring by Trent Reznor it does indeed have a lot of that too) and canvasses a broad range of feeling, witnessing the bitter dissolution of friendships as well as affording a glimpse into the rare, incendiary joy of being right on the cusp of something truly groundbreaking--so much so, in fact, as to be revolutionary. Jesse Eisenberg is extraordinary in the film's leading role, never missing a beat with his staccato cadence, strange attempts at tact and deft portrayal of what is clearly quite an ego. The film is as fastidious as it is sincere, however, clearly having done it's homework in that of it's portrayals of technology, containing at least two scenes where a thick volume on "Sendmail," the inveterate open-source SMTP server technology, can briefly be spotted, as a background prop, as well as depicting terminal sessions wherein legitimate command-line's, like "wget," are run; and the standard Unix text-editor "Emacs" even gets a shout-out along the way. The only shortcoming of this film -- and perhaps such things are inevitable with so much ambition on the line -- is that while Mark's character is sufficiently complex and shaded in such elaborate detail that you don't know how to feel about him -- as is the case with most real people off the street -- each of the story's other main characters are rather one-dimensional, clearly being either "good" (as is the case with Eduardo) or "bad" (vis-à-vi Sean), and nothing too much in-between. Finally, it's hard to determine how the tertiary, supporting character of Christy fits into things as we're only really afforded a few details about her character leaving her significance unclear.

Overall this is a brilliant motion-picture and an important film of our times. I think it has the potential to be a juggernaut at this year's Academy awards, being a front-runner or at least a contender in several categories, including -- and especially -- "Best Picture." I would highly recommend this film to anyone and would even go so far as to recommend multiple viewings as I, in fact, am writing this review after a repeat trip to the theater.