The Rich are Just Like You and Me...Only Much Younger
4 Out Of 5 Stars
David Fincher has a knack for seedy underbellies, and he finds a juicy one to stab in "The Social Network." Working from a wordy script from Aaron Sorkin and a bravura performance from Jesse Eisenberg (as Mark Zuckerberg), he boils the creation of the most successful internet site down to friendship, betrayal and insecurity, with side servings of jealousy and greed. It's the same old story you've heard a million times before, just updated for the 21'st century.
Eisenberg shows the kind of detached brilliance of the uber-nerd stereotype, and he makes Zuckerberg into a believably arrogant genius. His zingers are cruelly on target, even though many of them are delivered at deserving targets. (It also is worth noting that had these things been said in an actual legal deposition, the speaker would have been escorted away.) However, you see essentially a hurt young man whose brilliance doesn't impress many folks because he is an overbearing ween. This fact is set up in the brutally dark comedic exchange at the movie's opening, where Zuckerberg is trying to score points with a girl, all the while continually berating her. One drunken revenge hacking later, and the seeds of Facebook are planted.
But it is that isolated anger that fuels "The Social Network." When the spoiled rich Winklevoss twins (played with a bit of trickery by one Armie Hammer) are trying to sue on the grounds of intellectual theft, Zuckerberg snaps at the lawyer representing them that his thoughts are "back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing." Then to drive his irritation at the attorney home, he sneers "Did I adequately answer your condescending question?"
There are snakes all over this grassy web, all trying to get to Zuckerberg's money, and at the same time, Zuckerberg stabs one of the only people to show him kindness, his co-founder (Andrew Garfield) Eduardo Saverin. It's hard to comprehend Zuckerberg's reasoning for trying to jam his one friend out of the business, although the snake oil spewed by Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake, who seems to be playing himself) seems a likely explanation. The way these three triangulate forms the emotional core of the film, with Parker playing demonic mischief maker, trying to grease his way into a spotlight that he envies Eduardo for having. The rapid-fire back and forth between all these spokes still centralize back on Zuckerberg, and "The Social Network" turns on how much you either believe the story or how much you can tolerate two hours of listening to these wealthy but morally bereft children spearing each other.
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