"The Social Network"

The fellow behind me in line at the ticket booth hissed "I don't want to see 'The Social Network': it's patronizing!"

So, I spent the movie trying to figure out precisely what he meant......

I guess the idea is that if you think everyone is into Facebook, and you make a Facebook movie, the same way if you think everyone is into car chases, and you make a car chase movie, then maybe you are being patronizing by doing so. But this movie is so much more than that! The dialogue flies at Mach 1, so even if you miss parts of it (and you will), you can still catch the gist of what's going on. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the story moves from the opaque particular (computer programming) to the the crystal-clear universal (betrayed friendship).

I wondered how a Harvard alum from the past might view this movie. What would someone like JFK think? The places and locales would be so, so familiar, and the social interaction too, but the dialogue would be utterly mysterious and strange. The world HAS changed that much, and in such a very short time!

And this is very recent history indeed; starting towards the end of 2003! I find it a bit disturbing that this blog is older than Facebook. As Ebert mentions below, I also noticed that the audience I was sitting with was very, very interested in the movie!

Other reviews make interesting points. For example, Craig Kennedy:

Jesse Eisenberg is the brilliant yet arrogant social misfit Mark Zuckerberg who, along with Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), combined the opposing forces of exclusivity and ubiquity into a cutting edge hook-up service for the Ivy League that was quickly transformed into a worldwide, multi-billion dollar phenomenon. Using the timeless launching point of boys who just want to connect with girls, Sorkin’s script takes a multi-threaded approach to the inevitable drama, jumping back and forth in time between the rocket ship rise of Facebook, the different lawsuits that would ultimately spring up as soon as money became involved, and ultimately the sad decline of a friendship. In the end, everyone gets rich, but no one seems very happy about it.

...The danger in such a character is that he isn’t very likable nor especially interesting as a human being. Part of the genius of Sorkin’s script however is that he frequently plays this unlikable social incompetent against the Winklevoss brothers (Armie Hammer in both roles), a pair of overprivileged jock frat boys who accuse Zuckerberg of stealing their idea and who are even less likable. By comparison, it’s much easier to pull for the nerd.

Garfield’s Eduardo meanwhile counterpoints the intensity of Zuckerberg. He’s softer, more handsome and more nuanced than his best friend. He’s not the same kind of genius, but he’s still smart and has a firmer grasp on the big picture. Plus he’s got the money to back up the brains. Garfield combines the nervous excitement of success with a quiet sensitivity and a growing fear that he’s a lesser player in the whole scenario.

The other key performance in The Social Network is Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker, the Napster creator who became involved in Facebook as it was just starting to get the attention of the moneymen in Palo Alto. If you haven’t made the leap already, it’s time to take Timberlake seriously as an actor. He’s fantastic as the fast-talking, charming and slightly devious character who manages to pull Zuckerberg into his orbit by sheer force of personality. What Timberlake brings to the screen here is a lifetime removed from The Mickey Mouse Club and ‘N Sync.

Roger Ebert also says interesting stuff:

David Fincher's film has the rare quality of being not only as smart as its brilliant hero, but in the same way. It is cocksure, impatient, cold, exciting and instinctively perceptive.

It hurtles through two hours of spellbinding dialogue. It makes an untellable story clear and fascinating. It is said to be impossible to make a movie about a writer, because how can you show him only writing? It must also be impossible to make a movie about a computer programmer, because what is programming but writing in a language few people in the audience know? Yet Fincher and his writer, Aaron Sorkin, are able to explain the Facebook phenomenon in terms we can immediately understand, which is the reason 500 million of us have signed up.

...Zuckerberg may have had the insight that created Facebook, but he didn't do it alone in a room, and the movie gets a narration by cutting between depositions for lawsuits. Along the way, we get insights into the pecking order at Harvard, a campus where ability joins wealth and family as success factors. We meet the twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both played by Armie Hammer), rich kids who believe Zuckerberg stole their "Harvard Connection" in making Facebook. We meet Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), Zuckerberg's roommate and best (only) friend, who was made CFO of the company, lent it the money that it needed to get started and was frozen out. And most memorably we meet Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the founder of two legendary web startups, Napster and Plaxo.

It is the mercurial Parker, just out of work but basked in fame and past success, who grabbed Zuckerberg by the ears and pulled him into the big time. He explained why Facebook needed to move to Silicon Valley. Why more money would come from venture capitalists than Eduardo would ever raise with his hat-in-hand visits to wealthy New Yorkers. And he tried, not successfully, to introduce Zuckerberg into the fast lane: big offices, wild parties, women, the availability of booze and cocaine.

...In an age when movie dialogue is dumbed and slowed down to suit slow-wits in the audience, the dialogue here has the velocity and snap of screwball comedy. Eisenberg, who has specialized in playing nice or clueless, is a heat-seeking missile in search of his own goals. Timberlake pulls off the tricky assignment of playing Sean Parker as both a hot shot and someone who engages Zuckerberg as an intellectual equal. Andrew Garfield evokes an honest friend who is not the right man to be CFO of the company that took off without him, but deserves sympathy.

"The Social Network" is a great film not because of its dazzling style or visual cleverness, but because it is splendidly well-made. Despite the baffling complications of computer programming, web strategy and big finance, Aaron Sorkin's screenplay makes it all clear, and we don't follow the story so much as get dragged along behind it. I saw it with an audience that seemed wrapped up in an unusual way: It was very, very interested.

Justin Timberlake is AMAZING as Sean Parker, aka Satan. What does the Bible say about Satan?:

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, Yes, has God said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden? 2 And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. 4 And the serpent said to the woman, You shall not surely die: 5 For God does know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

That tempter, the one that shall be as a god, that's Justin Timberlake's Sean Parker! What an excellent acting job!

Andrew Garfield is also amazing as Eduardo Saverin. He tries to be the moral center of a highly amoral story, and gets pushed aside.

Imdb has interesting and important anachronisms and trivia regarding the movie:

The events of the film take place in 2003 and 2004. However, most of the computers in the film are running Windows XP Service Pack 3, which was not released until 2008.

The deejay at the 2003 party is mixing with a music software called Serato Scratch Live, which did not get released until May of 2004.

During the Valentine's Day a cappella performance the girl checking her email remarks that she hopes the links she's being sent come from 'Cats That Look Like Hitler' the scene takes place in early 2004, while the website didn't launch until 2006.

The song being played in the nightclub is "The Sound Of Violence," performed by Dennis de Laat. This song did not exist until the year 2009.

Because director David Fincher was unable to find any suitable identical twin actors to play real-life identical twins Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, two unrelated actors were hired to play each brother - Armie Hammer as Cameron and Josh Pence as Tyler. Fincher thought that Hammer looked the most like the real brothers, so for some scenes, the visual effects team photographed Hammer speaking Tyler's lines and created a computer-generated model of his face to paste over Pence's. Traditional split-screen work, with Hammer's separate performances as each brother stitched together in the same frame, was also used.

The opening breakup scene with Jesse Eisenberg and Rooney Mara ran eight script pages and took 99 takes.

Cameo: [Aaron Sorkin] The ad executive that Mark Zuckerburg and Eduardo Saverin meet in New York is played (in a credited appearance) by Sorkin, the screenwriter for this film.

During one of the depositions, it is mentioned that the invention of Facebook made Mark Zuckerburg "the biggest thing on a campus that included nineteen Nobel Laureates, fifteen Pulitzer Prize winners, two future Olympians, and a movie star." One of the lawyers then asks, "Who was the movie star?" and the response is, "Does it matter?" This movie star was, in fact, Natalie Portman, who was enrolled at Harvard from 1999 to 2003 and helped screenwriter Aaron Sorkin by providing him insider information about goings-on at Harvard at the time Facebook first appeared there.