By Katelan Cunningham
I was at the midnight showing of “The Social Network” whispering to a friend about a trailer, when the movie just started. No titles. No music. No panning of scene or close-ups of fond objects of the protagonist.
It just started.
Whispers faded, rustling wrappers were slowly silenced. Just like the social network itself, it snuck in quietly and quickly demanded all of my attention. I was addicted.
Director David Fincher (“Fight Club”) and writer Aaron Sorkin (“A Few Good Men”) didn’t have much room to smudge the details of this story to create something more film-worthy, because the story of Facebook isn’t over yet. There is respect to be found in sticking to the truth and even more respect in tackling that truth while it’s a part 500 million people’s lives.
Sticking to the truth didn’t appear to inhibit the filmmakers’ creativity in any way. The grit and truth of the characters at times has the feeling of a documentary. The script is biting, smart and sarcastic. More than that, it captures not only the characters but a generation, much like Facebook.
Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg, an abrasive, arrogant self-committed outcast and undergrad at Harvard. In 2003, a bitter break-up leads to a drunken blog post, an offensive website and notoriety on campus as a more-than-efficient hacker and programmer. (Who would have thought a story like this would start with a girl?)
This puts him on the radar of two Harvard rowers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (twins) and Divya Narendra (played by Max Minghella of “Art School Confidential” fame).
These are the people who file the first lawsuit for intellectual property theft.
They choose Zuckerberg as part of their team to create The Harvard Connection, a dating site exclusively for Harvard students. Instead of working on their project, this prompts Zuckerberg’s idea for what was then, “The Facebook.”
Eduardo Saverin is the CFO of The Facebook and Zuckerberg’s only friend (despite over 500 million friends Facebok has on the site to date). He funds the project and is Zuckerberg’s business partner from the beginning, until Zuckerberg gets caught up with the cool, savvy, provocative mind behind Napster, Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake). This leads to betrayal and being sued by Saverin for $600 million.
The film succeeds most in making you sympathize with Zuckerberg. Maybe not with his cynicism or frigidity, but his strive to be at the top, to be remembered.
However you may feel about the man, Zuckerberg achieved what he intended, to “taking the entire social experience of college and putting it online.” And now that audience extends far beyond college students.
In what started as an exclusive place, an online club where Zuckerberg not only belonged, but owned, now Facebook is a place open to everyone.
Zuckerberg even says on his own Facebok page “I’m trying to make the world a more open place by helping people connect and share.” This connection is what has got everyone updating their status, tagging, commenting and “liking.”
This movie is courageous in its relevance. Facebook hasn’t died, and shows no signs of doing so soon. The scrutiny of relevance is a daunting challenge.
My generation has jumped from the Dewey Decimal system to Google. From pocket-sized cell phones to pocket-sized smart phones in such a short amount of time. We Facebook. We Google. We tweet.
Yes, those are all verbs, and it’s the world we live in. We need to feel connected constantly and instantly.
It’s hard to say if Facebook’s social networking opportunities have crippled our ability for face-to-face social interaction or just facilitated the direction our generation and our society was already going.
But a lot can be said for this human need to belong and connect and “The Social Network” captures that necessity in a terrifying truth that is painfully human.
