Even seeing this film on opening night I went into it having already heard a lot of praise and discussion. The hype train was rolling on full speed ahead and I wasn’t ignorant to the excitement that this film was generating whatsoever. It made me kind of nervous going in. When a film gets hyped up as the best of the year by everyone before it even comes out, it can color your viewing whether you want it to or not. Early on in this film I caught myself jumping on a couple of small things and wondering whether they were indicators that this movie had been overrated. The music struck me at first as being overpowering and intrusive. It sounded really good, but it was almost overpowering the scenes it was a part of. Early on there is a reference to watching Shark Week. Don’t get me wrong, I love Shark Week, but it made me worried that this would be a trite film full of pop culture references meant to suck in the college crowd who showed up to watch the movie about Facebook. Thankfully, this didn’t happen at all. And before I knew it, I wasn’t thinking about the music much at all other than how it was interesting and modern, and how it’s pulsing rhythms felt really unique and cutting edge and fit in very well with the film’s overall aesthetic. I think I was initially reacting negatively to the fact that this isn’t a mundane film. This is different from anything else I’ve ever seen. It was almost as if I had to learn to watch this movie properly.
One of the first things that jumped out at me as being different than anything I’d ever seen before was the image itself. Right away you can tell that this is filmed digitally and not on film stock, but this looks different than any digital movie that I’ve seen. The clarity of image and depth of focus is astounding. The picture is sharp, focused, and seems to go on forever. A little digging around led me to the fact that this is the first film that Fincher has filmed on the RED One camera and is the first studio film that will be both shot and projected in 4K resolution. Apparently this is quadruple the resolution that you get from the normal films we’ve been watching in theaters. Maybe for the first time this led to me watching a digital image and not being bothered by it whatsoever. This has none of the grain or texture of an image shot on film, but it lacks that rounded glossy look that digital filming usually has. You know, where all of the people sort of look more like plastic dolls than they do actual humans. That’s all replaced by an incredible sharpness that refines the digital look to something very palatable. This focus on new technology not only makes the film look really cutting edge, but it ties the art of the film into the story thematically. This is a story about the generation of progress, the generation of digital integration, and the new experience of watching this sort of digital image felt very right and very at home handling the material.
The story we’re given is the creation tale of the popular social networking site Facebook, but what the film is really about is the insight we get into the character of its creator Mark Zuckerberg. We’re told the tale through the narrative framework of a series of depositions relating to two simultaneous lawsuits raised against the newly made billionaire. Through the various testimonies we are given the origins of the idea for Facebook, its initial financing, and how it became a phenomenon. We’re introduced first to Mark (Jesse Eisenberg), whose creation of a co-ed rating website crashed the Harvard network and gained the attention of a couple of enterprising upperclassmen named Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (Armie Hammer playing a duel role). They want to hire Zuckerberg to create their website The Harvard Connection, which is going to be like Myspace, but exclusive, as you’ll need a valid Harvard email address to join. The idea intrigues Zuckerberg, but instead of creating The Harvard Connection for the large, blonde twins who hired him, he strings them along and gets his friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) to finance a similar website that becomes The Facebook. The two lawsuits levied at Zuckerberg come from the Winklevoss twins and Saverin, one for the stealing of an idea, and the other for shrewdly cutting the other founder out of the deal when Facebook went big and started generating income. The morally compromised Zuckerberg isn’t exactly your normal protagonist, but the narrative approach taken towards presenting his story works very well. The deposition scenes drive the plot forward in a too fast, too furious way. They play out simultaneously, often cut together to complete each other’s thoughts and dialogue. It gives the film a rhythm and a momentum that goes a long way toward lending excitement to material that looks pretty dry in concept. The high stakes conversations in the courtroom tell the story, and are able to infuse all of the rising action with the tension of the climax. We’re not dropped off innocuously in a college setting and asked to get interested in scenes of people typing at their computers, we know that everything we’re watching is a lead up to strife and conflict. We’re given the stakes right up front and it makes the first act of the film just as engaging as the third. The results are a story that is able to remain compelling and often suspenseful even though it’s all detailing recent news stories that we already know the results of. The real world basis of the story melts away and you become engrossed with the slightly off, slightly fictional lives of the characters in the film rather than the real-world people that they represent. This isn’t a movie about Mark Zuckerberg the person; it’s about Mark Zuckerberg the movie character. And his character is so well fleshed out and defined that you become very invested in his emotional state. The stakes here aren’t the lawsuits and how they end up playing out. It isn’t about who wins and who loses, it’s about how the results affect Mark. And the pieces come together so well that you will actually care. At one point in the telling of the events Eduardo is on the phone with Mark having a very serious conversation about the future direction of Facebook while his jealous girlfriend lights his bedroom on fire in the background. At that moment I realized how cinematically and flat out melodramatically this story was being presented to me, but I also realized that I didn’t care. It’s all just part of the compact, fast moving, exciting nature of the film. Once it all so deftly started to play out in front of me I was completely willing to go along for the ride and let it take me where it might.
The world of this film revolves around Zuckerberg, and the other characters who show up act as reflections of him more so than they stand alone as their own forces. Regardless, Eisenberg is supported by some great performances that could all very well get recognition come awards season. If the character of Eduardo Saverin was crafted for a reason, it is probably to remind Zuckerberg of his roots. From the very beginning of this story, when Zuckerberg creates his splash by creating Facemash, it is Eduardo that he calls for help, and it is Eduardo’s algorithm that makes the site’s rating system possible. And when it comes time to buy servers for The Facebook, it’s Eduardo’s checkbook that Zuckerberg thinks of first. They were best friends, or as Eduardo tells it, he may have been Zuckerberg’s only friend. As closed off and harsh as Zuckerberg is, Eduardo is equally open and soulful. Garfield plays the role with complete vulnerability. While Zuckerberg hides behind a gruff demeanor and a permanent scowl, you can see every emotion that Eduardo feels transparently play across his face. Eduardo is trusting and loyal, maybe to a fault. When he’s chosen to join one of Harvard’s prestigious final clubs and Zuckerberg isn’t, Mark treats him with blatant jealousy and downright contempt. Despite this, Eduardo shrugs it off, accepting Mark for who he is. Conversely, the second that Eduardo’s motivations don’t match up with Zuckerberg’s vision, he begins the process of cutting him out of Facebook. Eduardo and Zuckerberg come from the same place, they started down the same path as partners, and at one point they diverged so far in opposite directions that they became adversaries. Eduardo seems to be the vision of who Zuckerberg might have become if he wasn’t so shrewd, if he wasn’t so socially awkward, and if he could let go of his inherent feelings of superiority. Garfield embodies the role. If he weren’t so strongly challenged by some of his other co-stars in this film I would say that he is a shoe-in for a supporting actor nomination. With the release of The Social Network that field is now crowded.
Another of those great supporting performances is Armie Hammer as Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. The same sort of digital face replacement technology that Fincher used to create the aged versions of Brad Pitt’s character in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was used to allow him to play the role of both twins. At any given time that they are both on screen one is Hammer himself, and the other is a body look alike with Armie’s face filled in. That body double, his performance is so good and so important to pulling off the effect, that he got credit for playing the role as well. The cast list reads Armie Hammer as Cameron and Josh Pence as Tyler. Since it’s hard to know which actor to credit for what, it’s hard to understand how nominating someone for these roles might play out. What isn’t in dispute is that the on screen presence of the Winklevoss twins is an amazing marriage of performances and digital effects creating a movie magic trick that would be impossible to detect if you didn’t already know about it going in. This is the end result of what Fincher has been doing with digital effects his entire career. He experimented artistically with what he could do with digital creations early on, toned the showiness down to improve the look of his films without drawing so much attention to the process in Zodiac, pushed things to a new technical level that left people scratching their heads wondering how he did what he did in Benjamin Button, and now put all of that work together to create a seamless unreality completely indistinguishable from the real world in this film. The Winklevosses aren’t special effects creations; they’re comedic relief, they’re antagonists, and they’re two, distinguishable, three-dimensional characters. No matter the argument over which bit of credit should be given to who for that, everyone who was involved in the creation should be proud of what they accomplished.
The third truly notable supporting performance in this film came from Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker, the fallen from grace founder of Napster. Timberlake is massively entertaining in the role, which is, on the page, big, loud, and showy. Parker is an unstoppable force of ego. He is all appearance, all talk, and all carefully repressed insecurity rolled up into one charismatic package. He surrounds himself with beautiful women, covers himself in the finest clothing, and parties at the trendiest clubs, all despite being in a state of near bankruptcy due to his lengthy lawsuits with the recording industry. The one thing those trials didn’t seem to be able to take away from him is his bluster, and he uses it to move from meal ticket to meal ticket. When we meet him he has targeted Zuckerberg and Facebook to be his next set of coat tails to ride. Zuckerberg is instantly taken with him and ready to hand over the keys to his kingdom based seemingly on Parker’s charm alone, and we can’t really blame him. This is what Zuckerberg might become without checks and balances or restraint. If his F the world attitude gets so out of control that he begins to buy into his new status as the god of the Internet, he could easily go from being a near friendless nerd, to a vapid, empty celebrity. Parker is a complete showoff, and offers only empty, braggadocios advice; but somehow you’re never able to hate him. I say somehow, but what I mean is due to the natural charisma of Timberlake, you’re never able to hate him. He plays Parker as earnest even at the same time that you know he’s a cad. He goes from a cartoon character, to someone who is vilified, and finally to someone that you can’t help but feel for over the course of the film. One of the many monologues that he gives particularly stood out to me as something that could come to be looked at as very important and iconic in the future. While at a drug fueled house party he waxes philosophical with a couple of drunk young interns about the ways in which Facebook will change the world. They won’t just go to parties anymore, they’ll document those parties while they’re there and then relive them with their friends for eternity on their Facebook pages. He states that “we lived on farms, then we lived in cities, and now we’re going to live on the Internet”. Whether or not the vision for Facebook was stolen from the Winklevosses isn’t exactly clear, but there’s no question that Parker has co-opted it as his own. As I was listening to Timberlake deliver this monologue I was having flashbacks to how the “greed is good” speech summed up the egoism of the 80s, and how the “choose life” monologue summed up the malaise of the 90s. I wouldn’t be surprised if this speech went on to sum up for future generations of filmgoers what it was to live in the 00s in much the same way. This was the decade of progress and connection. The decade of one world economy, universal access to information, the loss of privacy, and the new hive mind. I know that Timberlake is already a huge star and one of the most famous people on the planet, but he shows an ability to match real acting with natural charisma here that points to the possibility that he could be even so much more. He could be the biggest star in the world; and I’m talking movie star. He could be the new Tom Cruise, the new Tom Hanks; you name it. With the right roles it is entirely possible. After this performance his teen idol status should be adequately shed so that somebody with some talent will try him out in a substantial starring role and I can’t wait to see the results.
Next we move on to the character of Zuckerberg himself, the real meat and potatoes of the film. Everything we need to know about Zuckerberg as a character is given to us in the opening scene. He is on a date with his girlfriend. His last date, it turns out, as the insufferable process of dealing with Mark on a personal level has finally taken its toll on his girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara). His personal skills are awkward bordering on Aspergers. The idea that he should treat anyone as an equal rather than as a fascinated onlooker never occurs to him because his sense of superiority is so deeply ingrained. It only takes a couple minutes of condescending conversation to make it clear that he will never make an important connection with another human being because of this. During the date he goes on and on about the final clubs and the jocks and kids of privilege that populate them. At the same time that Zuckerberg radiates superiority over Erica, insulting her school, insulting her intelligence, he is simultaneously plagued by feelings of inferiority due to the fact that the guys in the final clubs are valued above him. The fact that they have exclusive organizations that he can’t be a part of eats him up inside. By the time Erica finally has enough and tells him where to go, Zuckerberg has worked himself into such a narcissistic lather that the breakup becomes the fault of anyone but himself. When he gets home he starts the process of hacking into the school’s houses various online facebooks, downloading the pictures of the women who live there, and putting together the Facemash website. A website that pits two girls against each other and rates them according to attractiveness. The whole enterprise plays like Zuckerberg’s revenge on the female sex for scorning him. When the website launches and starts getting thousands of hits, when it starts to look like it might crash the entire Harvard network, Eduardo suggests that Mark should shut it down before he gets into any trouble. The look on Eisenberg’s face is priceless. It’s totally arrogant, untouchable, and incredulous. This is someone who believes that his intellect sets him above the rest of the world in a very deeply ingrained way. And still, it’s after another failed encounter with this girl that he firmly states, “we have to expand” and takes Facebook from being a Harvard only website to rapidly expanding it to other college campuses all over the world. Everything he does is motivated by a drive to achieve acclaim and acceptance. And when he is motivated, his focus is scary. By establishing the prickly Zuckerberg as its lead character this film starts to feel very close to David Fincher doing Noah Baumbach. There are numerous similarities between Zuckerberg and Eisenberg’s character in The Squid and the Whale. The opening scene of this film felt very similar to Eisenberg lecturing his date about literature rather than conversing with her in Squid. Never has Fincher handled a lead as unsympathetic as this, and still the results are very impressive. Despite my love for The Squid and the Whale, I’ve got to say that Fincher does Baumbach better than even Baumbach. And Eisenberg does work here that, while very similar to things he’s done before, puts everything else he’s attempted to shame. The nuance and surprising range he is able to show in a very reserved, small performance is astounding. Every moment, every choice seems to have been carefully crafted by Eisenberg before shooting. It feels like everything that Eisenberg has done in his career has led up to what he accomplishes in this film. And, perhaps most importantly, this portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg is Fincher finally paired back up with material that feels as important and relevant as the stuff he was doing in the 90s. The Zuckerberg character is just as filled with drive and purpose as the Jack character was empty of it in Fight Club. If that film was about the feelings of being lost, confused, and purposeless that permeated the pre 9/11 world, then this film embodies the social climate that has come after. Young people have gone from having ennui in 1999 to having startups in 2010.
Zuckerberg is the center of this film and the way Eduardo and Parker play the angel and devil on his shoulders make up the drama of the story. The interactions of these three characters, the way they treat one another, the way their choices effect one another, and what their motivations are for doing what they do are interesting, nuanced, and filled with real stakes. The characters are so three dimensional that often you don’t know who the protagonist is. Zuckerberg starts out as your window into this world, but later, when his choices become more villainous, Eduardo takes over as the main source of sympathy for a while, until finally the focus is put firmly back on Mark and how he will develop as a person due to what he has gone through over the course of this film. It’s an interesting way to tell a story that felt less like a crafted choice and more like a necessary side effect to the complex nature of the characters we are given. And even though Eduardo and Parker play those angel/devil roles for Zuckerberg, in the end he is too strong of a character himself to truly fall under the influence of either of them. These men’s stories aren’t going to be wrapped up into a neat package, their lives are going to end up much more messy and real. These interactions couldn’t lead to any sort of predictable, Hollywood ending; so where this all was heading didn’t seem exactly clear to me while I was watching things unfold. The real intrigue wasn’t in the lawsuits, it wasn’t in who was going to be getting which percentage of the profits generated by Facebook; it was in how they would be personally affected by the results. In his attempts to reach out and connect with the world beyond his grasp, Zuckerberg ended up alienating himself from the only people that reached out and tried to connect with him in reality. I found the place Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin left him at the end to be an absolutely sublime choice. We’re given a moment that is meaningful without sacrificing subtlety. It’s both open-ended and a natural ending point for Zuckerberg’s personal story. It takes a character who struggles to be out of our grasp, who wants so desperately to be elevated above us, and it puts him in our shoes. We follow his amazing story, we watch him accomplish things that are beyond our understanding, but we leave him in a very relatable position that we’ve all found ourselves in. Try as he might, he isn’t quite able to transcend humanity, and ends up having to interact with it on Facebook just like the rest of us. Even the God of this new online world is still just a man living in it. I had the same feeling watching this film conclude that I did watching Winter’s Bone earlier in the summer, that everything I watched had built precisely so that it could culminate in this moment. I liked the journey of this film, but it was at the final destination that I finally fell in love with it and decided to elevate my rating from four stars to five. That satisfying feeling of an ending that leaves everything sitting in it’s right place is a powerful one that I don’t get to feel often enough. Finding the right moment to end on, leaving a strong last impression, it’s something that should be considered very carefully during the screenwriting process. If you know exactly where you want to go, and make everything you present relevant to getting there, chances are you’ll leave your viewers feeling like they’ve seen a complete work of art rather than just a nifty two-hour diversion.
