If you’re a college student, chances are you’ve gotten on Facebook at least once today before reading this review. If you’re a college student and don’t have a Facebook, congratulations. You and four other people in the nation have resisted a very popular growing trend.
But how did that trend even start? That’s what director David Fincher’s new movie “The Social Network” aims to uncover.
Fincher (“Fight Club,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”), along with writer Aaron Sorkin (“The West Wing”), takes the story of former Harvard student, Facebook’s creator and the world’s youngest billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, as told by fellow Harvard attendee Ben Mezrich (“Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions” on which the film “21” was based) in his book “The Accidental Billionaires.”
The movie opens with a simple collegiate atmosphere. Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and his girlfriend Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) are talking with one another at a bar. Eisenberg immediately lays out the type of character Zuckerberg will be in this film: socially awkward, somewhat tactless, yet still desperately seeking the approval of others. And when he loses the approval of his girlfriend, who within 10 minutes becomes his ex, Zuckerberg decides, in a bit of a drunken stupor, to lambast his girlfriend on LiveJournal (remember that?) and create Facemash.com, a website where people judge women’s attractiveness by comparing them to each other.
While Facemash.com is getting programmed, we’re shown that college social networking before Facebook moves along, via drinks, partying and doing some rather outrageous things to ensure attention and affection. (This is, of course, something that Facebook probably hasn’t changed all that much, if at all.) When Facemash.com goes viral and crashes the Harvard servers, Zuckerberg becomes an overnight celebrity.
Somewhere around this point, the movie stops going in the direction of typical, chronological story-telling and the pace of the film picks up to a near frenzy as it is revealed to the audience that Zuckerberg is actually facing two different depositions about Facebook and being brought up on charges by the very people he once called colleagues and friends.
This pace, a rapid-fire trip through three different events, creates this mesmerizing atmosphere that is almost certain to draw the audience in. There is not a dull moment in the entire film. And even when it seems there might be, music composers Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails, and Atticus Ross, a producer for Nine Inch Nails, come to the rescue and combine a compelling soundtrack with intense camera work to keep the audience drawn in.
During one seemingly unnecessary scene, we see the Harvard crew team compete in England with Hollandia’s crew team. But before one can ask, “Why is this scene even here?” Reznor and Ross bring out their version of the classic Grieg piece “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” attach it to some amazing direction by Fincher and create one of the most memorable and engaging scenes in the entire film. And since the rest of the film, through the acting and writing, remains one of the most engaging films I’ve seen all year, that’s a feat.
Sorkin’s writing takes what could easily have been a dull story and creates some amazingly humorous moments to break up the drama, allowing us to feel the realistic nature of it all. The Winklevoss twins (Armie Hammer Jr. and Josh Pence) get to deliver some of the best comic scenes I’ve seen in a long time, causing more laughter than I ever expected from a Facebook film.
The acting stands solidly as well. There are several familiar faces throughout the movie, but perhaps the most surprising and pleasing performance comes from Justin Timberlake, who plays Napster founder and Zuckerberg mentor Sean Parker. Charisma seeps out of him, but you feel the entire time that there’s something off about him. And future Spiderman Andrew Garfield portrays Zuckerberg’s former partner and friend Eduardo Saverin with a very intense realism that kept me completely enraptured in his struggles.
“The Social Network” was a movie I was skeptical about when I first heard the idea. A Facebook movie sounds boring, but Fincher, Reznor, Ross, Sorkin and the cast don’t bring a movie just about how Facebook came about. They bring a compelling story of a young college boy who suffered heartbreak and struggled to become amazing, perhaps no matter who was sacrificed in the way. But, as can often happen in a drunken stupor when you have access to the Internet, perhaps there were regrets for those involved.
One thing you probably won’t regret? Seeing “The Social Network.”
‘THE SOCIAL NETWORK’
Runtime: 121 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13
CW Critic’s Rating: 4 stars out of 4
Bottom line: “The Social Network” shows the seedy underbelly of young society and a drive for acceptance and a working business in one of the most compelling films of this year.
