THE SOCIAL NETWORK MOVIE REVIEW - The Movie Messenger

The Social Network is David Fincher’s latest film starring Jessie Eisenberg as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and follows Facebook’s humble beginning through a story of loneliness, betrayal, and revenge. 

At first hearing about “the Facebook movie” you may wonder how such a movie could be compelling and enjoyable.  Writer Aaron Sorkin focuses the story not much about Facebook, but it’s creator Mark Zuckerberg, and how his obsession with creating the well known website negatively effects the people around him when Zuckerberg’s wants are exactly what Facebook promotes: to be seen, known, and accepted. 

The movie begins with Zuckerberg being dumped by a girlfriend, and we learn by his mannerisms, speech, and quirks that he is a socially awkward individual, as well as highly intelligent.  This breakup burns a fire within him and he creates a site called facesmash that compares different girls with each other on who more attractive.  He then teams with his roommate Eduardo (Andrew Garfield) to expand the idea of a social network online that encompasses the college experience.  Zuckerberg’s 'TheFacebook' expands as working on it damages relationships with others, including friends, along the way.

Whether or not this is a true depiction of the real Mark Zuckerberg is unknown, but the character portrayed in this film is a lost soul who is only trying to be accepted on the grandest scale possible, but his problem is that he can’t help but burn bridges simultaneously as he’s trying to be accepted.  This is apparent with a pair of twin brothers known as the Winklevoss twins and their business partner Divya Narendra, who claim the facebook idea was stolen from them after they pitched the social site, ConnectU, to Zuckerberg.

Justin Timberlake plays a part as Sean Parker, the founder of Napster, and plays the confident young businessman well enough to the point that you don’t see pop singer Timberlake anymore, but a conniving, money hungry wolf in sheep’s clothing.  The rest of the supporting cast is superb, and Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg is so subtle and sarcastic you love him as much as you hate him, but by the end, you can only feel his struggles although he only continues to hurt himself. 

The Social Network is a metaphor of how our society’s communication has fallen with technologies such as Facebook, most evident with a scene with Edwardo and a girlfriend quarreling over their status as a couple, and even email and text messaging is cornered, which the film displays as Zuckerberg’s only form of communication with the ConnectU team, an obvious way to avoid them without avoiding them.

The creation of Facebook itself is only in the background of the movie, mostly because I’m sure we wouldn’t understand the computer programming jargon anyway if it were heavily included, but just the basics shown like the Facebook’s simple design and inclusion of other features like the “wall” will be known by all that use the site, connecting the audience to something they are all too familiar with.

And connecting is what this movie is really about – our desire to connect to others with the notion that we may really not know how.