OK, so maybe I didn’t quite jizz in my pants, but I can’t even begin to describe how horny I have been over the prospect of seeing this film. And surprisingly (though thankfully), I went into it knowing very little about what to expect. Some time many months ago, I began to hear buzz that a major studio film about Facebook was in production. Never having read The Accidental Billionaires, I wasn’t aware of what the tone of the film would be like or which angle the filmmakers planned to take with it. I thought “hmm, that sounds kind of interesting, but it has huge potential to be lame and gimmicky.” Boy was I wrong. But even so, being a complete cyberculture junkie and endlessly fascinated with how the world of online social networking has permeated and transformed fundamental aspects of our cultural landscape, I knew this would be a movie I would want to see.
About a month ago, when the major trailer push was on for the October 1 wide release date, I discovered that the screenplay was written by Aaron Sorkin, the iconic creative mind behind some of television’s most enduring and captivating series, including The West Wing and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, as well as a number of acclaimed films like A Few Good Men and The American President. I really fell in love with Sorkin’s storytelling style and approach to dialogue from his work on Studio 60, which — despite the fact that it was canceled after only one brilliant season — remains in my opinion one of the smartest, funniest and most entertaining pieces of television making in the history of the medium. So the minute I found out he was attached to The Social Network, my panties started getting moist. Then, much to my further delight, I discovered that not only was Sorkin the writer, but David Fincher, the innovative and captivating filmmaker who brought us the unforgettable big screen adaptation of Fight Club, was set to direct. This only doubled the project’s credibility and my excitement about it. What finally set me over the edge from “excited” to “orgasmic” was when I discovered that Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails, obviously) would be scoring the film.
So by this point I knew that I really needed to see this movie, and I needed to see it the day it opened in theatres. Which I did. Friday night. I bought my advanced tickets online and I stood in line to get good seats, the whole nine yards. I don’t do the whole “hardcore moviegoer experience” very often, but whenever I do anything I like to commit to it, and it was fun being excited about a movie for a change, because usually TV is more my bag.
As I mentioned before, I was walking into the movie a bit blind as far as what to expect from the story or the storytelling approach. I knew it was about the early years of Facebook and I knew that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was the principal character, but beyond that my mind was a blank slate. I wasn’t sure if Sorkin was going to take a more general, statement centric approach to the film and attempt to contextualize the tremendous impact that Zuckerberg’s creation has made on the social fabric of our culture, especially for the “next-gen” demographic. I certainly hoped it wasn’t going to be a fairly cliche “spoiled by the evils of fame and money” cautionary tale. But in the end, it was neither. What it was, was an astute and fascinating character study of a man who has been both glorified and vilified by those closest to him and by the public at large for the scope of his influence and success, as well as the steps he’s taken (and perhaps the people he’s stepped on) to get there. It is important to approach the film with the understanding that while this story is based on true events, the portrayal of those events was largely one-sided to begin with (it is widely held that Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerberg’s best friend turned legal adversary and a major character in the film, was the source for The Accidental Billionaires), and has most certainly been tweaked and embellished by Sorkin to make for more dramatic and thematic impact. There are elements of the story that clearly Saverin could never have been party to first-hand, and that Sorkin dramatized to keep in line with his vision for Mark Zuckerberg, the character, as opposed to Mark Zuckerberg the actual human being.
Fincher’s directorial style, combined with Trent Reznor’s dark and driven score (which was very evocative of the time period in question), certainly gave the film a harder edge than the witty, language-heavy and dialogue-driven script would have had otherwise. Certainly the film is not as dark in tone as say, Fight Club, but nonetheless, Fincher’s signature is on this film. He manages to bring a sinister quality, a sense of impending doom, to many scenes which would have seemed relatively benign or even cliche in the hands of a lesser director. I’m thinking in particular of the montage at the final club party with the intense development and coding going on back at Mark’s dorm room. Fincher always manages to throw in a little unexpected surprise or two, and the beer bottle smashing scene is a good example of how he keeps a fresh eye and looks for ways to visually spice up such a dialogue-driven script.
Jesse Eisenberg, who plays Zuckerberg, is someone who has been around, but whose work I personally hadn’t yet had a chance to appreciate. He really impressed me. While I thought Sorkin’s script did a good job of keeping Mark’s character complex and multi-faceted, it was Eisenberg who gave Mark his depth. Eisenberg did a good job playing the emotional conflict within a fairly unemotional and controlled character, particularly with regard to the central relationship of the film — Eduardo (Andrew Garfield) and Mark.
Obviously, we cannot leave a discussion of this film without talking about Justin Timberlake’s role as Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster. While this film certainly didn’t portray Zuckerberg, the central protagonist, as either hero or villain, and I think in many ways made a very obvious point in not doing so because it would have made it a lesser film, if there is a “villain” character, it’s Parker. He’s said himself that he does not believe Sorkin’s portrayal of him in the script to be fully reflective of reality, and that he was made out to be a lot more of an asshole than he actually was. And hey, that’s probably true. As mentioned before, the script sacrificed realism for dramatic impact and Sorkin freely admits it. Don’t be bitter, Sean. You were played by Justin Timberlake! Coming back to Timberlake’s performance, while I thought he was very entertaining, I was never quite able to divorce myself from the fact that it *was* Justin Timberlake. Obviously, he was certainly the biggest star billing attached to the project. I was never quite able to let go and just immerse myself in the character with him the way I was with all of the other principal characters. That being said, perhaps the fact that it was Justin Timberlake brought a certain quality to the role as well that the filmmakers needed. This was a character who was fairly famous, who lived pretty larger than life, who knew how to play the game, but who really nobody knew much about. Maybe the JT factor is what they were going for.
Where Parker was portrayed as a greedy and self-absorbed opportunist, one fairly legitimate criticism of the film is the Eduardo Saverin comes off looking just a little too shiny clean. Was he really as much of a victim as the film portrayed him to be, or did it make for a better story to portray it that way because it made it more of a conflict for Mark when he finally betrayed him? It seems that Mark and Sean Parker’s biggest beef with Eduardo was that he shut down the accounts that were funding Facebook in California, right before they got the seed investment from Peter Thiel. The film portrayed it like, yes, there was serious development going on, but there was also serious partying going on and his money was being wasted on booze, bongs, babes and blow. Saverin didn’t want to fund Sean Parker’s party any longer, and Mark was caught in the middle between his man-crush on Parker and his loyalty to Saverin.
All in all, I walked in there not knowing what to expect, but I did expect to see a really smartly written, interestingly directed and well-acted film. And I was not disappointed.