Tuesday, January 25, 2011

THE SOCIAL NETWORK : FACEBOOK ME

Critics around the world have hailed THE SOCIAL NETWORK as the best film of the year. It won the Golden Globe for best picture, director, score, screenplay, actor and supporting actor and has been nominated for best picture at the Oscars. So is it really a good movie? Fortunately the answer is yes.

The movie tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), a computer geek at Harvard with practically no skills whatsoever when it comes to interacting with actual people. Dumped by his girlfriend as the movie opens, he returns to his dorm room, drinks heavily and begins blogging about her in the worst way possible. At the same time he hacks into various dorm data banks for pictures of girls across campus and then with a little help from his friends creates a web site that offers people the chance to rate each one against another. One can only imagine how well THAT goes over.

Chastised by the administration, Mark is then sought out by a prestigious pair of twin students, the Winklevoss brothers, in the hopes that he will assist then in creating an information site that will provide personal information between students at Harvard. He accepts but places their needs on the back burner while working on his own site, The Facebook. Unfortunately the whole idea behind The Facebook is similar to what they’ve asked him to create.

Using none of the computer code they used on their site, Mark creates Facebook and it becomes popular with the student at Harvard. With the help of his best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), he gets the financing to make the site even bigger. But as it grows so do the problems that come with something this big.

Mark views the world differently than most. His inability to communicate with people on a one to one basis is less about his not caring and more about the fact that he is more comfortable with writing code than having a simple date. And while he may be a genius when it comes to computers, his desire for a higher social status interferes with many of the decisions he makes throughout the film.

As the site becomes more popular, Mark and Eduardo expand their horizons making it available to universities other than Harvard. This of course doesn’t set well with the Winklevoss brothers. But more problems are on the horizon as Eduardo insists that they begin posting ads on the site to create a flow of income. For Mark the site has nothing to do with making money. It’s about the creation of the site and his being able to take credit for it, to elevate his status on both the campus and in the world.

As the site expands to Stanford, it draws the attention of Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the creator of Napster, who has a nose for business as well as trouble. He entices Mark to take the site over the top and make it the biggest most profitable web site around. As Eduardo attempts to gain funds via advertising and more in New York, Parker involves himself with Mark and gets funding set up in California. The rivalry between the two over the fortunes derived from Mark’s creation is a parallel storyline as both Eduardo and the Winklevoss brothers are both suing Mark for millions.

A film about computer geeks that’s interesting? No action, no explosions, gunplay involved? The answer is yes, the film is quite interesting and yes it does offer one of the best stories told on screen. The wordplay is fast and furious and Aaron Sorkin deserves every nomination he receives.

The acting is once more top notch with you feeling as if everyone involved truly is their character. Eisenberg is a master at fast paced conversation in every film I’ve seen him in and he takes it to a whole new level here. Even Timberlake, who many would want to toss off as just a boy band singer, does a great job here as a character who is both charming and slithery at the same time.

Most of us online know that Facebook exists and many of us use it. But my belief is that few know the story behind its creation or the turmoil that came between friends over its success. As with most movies my guess is that there is a certain amount of one sided story being told here but it still offers one hell of a story.  

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