The Social Network redux review

With the film’s recent Oscar disappointment next to the triumph of the Kings Speech’s, there’s no better time to review the merits of 2010’s oxymoronic worst idea for and best film. Next to Tom Hooper’s tale of perseverance and triumph over the typical Oscar ingredient of disability, The Social Network offered no answer to Zuckerberg’s borderline asperger’s social ineptness. The opening scene, featuring the fastest dialogue since His Girl Friday by West Wing scribe Aaron Sorkin sees Zuckerberg compared to “dating a stairmaster”. It’s a brilliant comparison because Jesse Eisenberg’s speech patterns exist in monologue rather than dialogue, ignoring the attentions of girlfriend Erica(Rooney Mara, in a brief but crucial role.) The electronic style pitter patter that forms much of our daily Facebook conversation was born out of social abnormalities we supposedly avoid- an irony that director David Fincher adores. Poking his voyeuristic camera into the backrooms of deplorable Harvard parties and bored blogging students, it’s a dark reflection of our own love of the thrill of Facebook stalking. Perhaps too dark for the academy, it’s a film which says far more about its viewers than any other film release of the century so far.

Crucially, it’s too a film with an emotional centre namely in the relationship between Zuckerberg and co- founder of Facebook Eduardo Saverin (played sympathetically by Andrew Garfield). As with Fincher from Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman in Se7en to Pitt and Edward Norton in Fight Club, it features the breakdown of a good male friendship on a grand scale. Zuckerberg’s dark third act ousting of Saverin from the company is brutal and marks a dramatic highpoint in Fincher’s career in a violent emotional outpouring of Garfield. Yet crucially Eisenberg whilst prickly never makes Zuckerberg completely cocksure and displays a lack of faith in his most harmful decisions. Like Charles Foster Kane and other film icons before him, he is an ambitious man at the cost of those few dear to him and himself. There is indeed more implication on second viewing that one endlessly quotable line sums it up: “Your not an asshole, just trying too hard to be one”.

If one target of Fincher’s is the socially underdeveloped nerds who run the world now, another is that of the elitist society which bores vengeful geeks like Zuckerberg. The hilarious Harvard elite Winklevoss twins(both played by Armie Hammer) offer consistent comic relief as a well as an expose of a supposedly classless American society. Accusing Zuckerberg of ‘intellectual property theft’ after he alters their idea into his own Facebook, their numerous political wrangling are comic highlights of the film. From their already immortal line “I’m 6, 5, 220 and there’s two of me” to their manner of trying to politely accost Zuckerberg through the 'gentleman' politics of Harvard law , it’s observational as well as hilarious. On the other end of the spectrum for Zuckerberg, is the freewheeling Napster founder Sean Parker(played with energetic ease by Justin Timberlake) who best appeals to Zuckerberg’s ideology. In one scene, Parker seduces Zuckerberg over shots in a nightclub to encourage user growth and delay advertisers as its “uncool”. Zuckerberg’s idolatry of Parker’s social ease and pseudo rapport with face book users is all that comes close to revealing Zuckerberg’s reason for Facebook’s creation. Is it an American style individualism celebration giving power to individual users over their own social elites? Or merely a proliferated offspring of a class based historic university? Whatever the reason, Sorkin's screenplay leaves this ambiguous in so doing leaving us in disarray as to what truly defines this moment of history.


Though Sorkin’s script is already a modern masterpiece, for decades to come Fincher’s direction will be seen as tragically snubbed by the academy. Opening in a brownstone Harvard palette of elitism, later moving to the sunny excess colours and the dark seedy nightspots of Sean Parker’s Palo Alto, the film is masterfully moody. Trent Reznor’s score in particular adds a horror dimension to Facebook’s creation chronicle with pulsating electronica and occasional shrieking atonal violins. It might hold the clue to the film’s secret identity that’s it’s a really a monster movie about its subject of a social revolution began by social ineptness. It’s a wonderful irony that will see Zuckerberg amongst screen legends Charles Foster Kane and Jake La Motta as well as the worst Oscar snub since the films of these figures.