Pro-Social

It seems premature to do a film about the origins of Facebook and its controversial founder Mark Zuckerberg so soon after these events took place. It feels like there has not been enough passage of time to truly see what the significance of these events really are. However, given the technological age that we live in where things are constantly updating and adapting, maybe there is no better time than now to make The Social Network, lest it seem outdated.

I certainly had a vested interest in seeing this film given the amount of time I've spent investigating Facebook as part of my doctoral research. As much as I knew about the key players involved with the website, I still found this to be a wholly engrossing film that touches on a lot of human characteristics.

Directed by David Fincher, The Social Network tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg through a broken narrative flashing back and forth between the website's origins and the two seperate deposition hearings that resulted from its creation. Using the deposition hearings to set up the flashback scenes works and allows you to see how things fell apart so quickly between Zuckerberg and his partners all the while Facebook continued to thrive and grow.

This is just one of the many interesting facets about this film. As you watch Zuckerberg try to deal with the people around him, you begin to wonder how someone who displays his intellectual superiority to all who are present thus alienates everyone, including friends could create a website designed for making social connections. Credit definitely deserves to go to Jesse Eisenberg, who has played the awkward nerd before, but never with the confidence and authority that he exhibits here. He commands the screen and does a nice job of displaying the complexities of Zuckerberg.

The other fascinating aspect of this film is how well it expressed the legal uncertainties associated with the Internet. Zuckerberg and co. set out to push the boundaries of what is acceptable and/or legal with Facebook and it blew up in their face when they began to fight with each other over ownership rights. It's both captivating and hilarious as you watch the lawyers not only have to deal with the ornery nature of their respective clients, but also trying to find precedent when none existed for a case like this. Those involved with Facebook really didn't know the monster they had created.

The film is filled with a lot of solid performances including Justin Timberlake as Napster founder, Sean Parker, Andrew Garfield (who will be the new Spiderman) as Zuckerberg's friend Eduardo, and Arnie Hammer, who has the difficult role of actually playing twin Harvard students. Each of them rise up to the challenge of the dense script by Aaron Sorkin and give nuanced performances that show how they were all complicit in this mess.

I'm not sure what kind of mainstream appeal this film will have, but I think anyone who is a member of Facebook owes it to themselves to see this film. Like most benefits we have thanks to the internet, we often take for granted the freedoms it affords us and the problems it can create for others. Watching this film will give you a new appreciation for the act that is social networking. It's not about clicking 'accept' to random individuals, its about being able to connect on a certain level with someone because you have a better understanding of who they are. Networking may have eliminated some of Zuckerberg's problems, but it also would have prevented us from seeing this excellent film. Grade: A