The Social Network Review

The Social Network, the latest film from director David Fincher captures the essence, the drama, the betrayal, and the raw genius behind the creation of the website known as Facebook.

            The film concentrates on Mark Zuckerberg, a computer genius and student at Harvard who would eventually become the “founder” of Facebook and how he threw away the only friend he had way in Eduardo Sanchez.

            The movie begins with Mark and his girlfriend on a date at a bar with Mark ignoring her ever remark.  He talks whatever he pleases giving no recognition to her.  She gets angry, gets up, and the relationship is over.  Mark takes his anger to the internet, blogging about his putrid ex, and then decides to create a website comparing girls from Harvard while intoxicated.  The website crashes Harvard’s mainframe making Mark the most hated male by females on campus.  He gains notoriety from fellow students, the Winklevoss twins, who want to have him help create a new social network website.  Then throw the creator of Napster Sean Parker into the mix and you have one big catastrophe waiting to happen.  Mark is sued by the Winklevoss twins for stealing their idea; Mark is accused in school of trespassing by hacking their computers for information on his site.  There is his best friend, Eduardo Sanchez, who sues Mark for literally throwing him out of the company when he funded everything.  I would say more, but I don’t want to give away the entire movie.   He throws away all his friends to retain to the one idea that is his.  His idea was more important than his friendship.

            At first glance this film seems like a joke.  How can you make a movie about Facebook and make it good?  The writing in this film is impeccable thanks to the writer Aaron Sorkin who delivers a thought provoking, rapidly entertaining screenplay.  It delves into these characters lives and makes us feel like we are seeing something that changed the course of social networking forever.

            Director David Fincher with this brilliant screenplay directs what I feel is his bravado masterpiece.  Fincher takes this seemingly humorous concept and crafts a dark and majestic outlook on how Facebook came to be.  He captures the craziness of Zuckerberg’s computer genius when Zuckerberg creates the first website with beauty, using rapid shots from multiple angles to create a sense of spontaneous creativity and rapid thinking by Zuckerberg.  He creates beautiful flow between scenes and beautiful rich images of the Harvard Campus.

            This film I feel in its entirety defines our generation in a nutshell.  It captures our lust for power and our rights to be original as idealists.   It proves the idea that now one idea can change the lives of millions and billions of people through the internet.