The Social Network (5/5 Stars) October 6, 2010

I’ll be your friend, Mark Zuckerberg.
Well, here we are with what we call a paradox. I have given this movie five stars and I will swear that it is a “must see” movie. But at the same time, I have completely failed to come away with the impression Aaron Sorkin the writer and David Fincher the director, surely wanted to make. I didn’t know anything about Mark Zuckerberg before I watched this movie (I love Facebook, but that’s about it), but I left it with admiration and sympathy for him. Zuckerberg is my type of guy. I would love to have a beer with him any day. 

That’s a paradox because this movie wants to make Zuckerberg out to be an asshole. That’s how it starts and that’s how it ends. And although it does an incredibly good job of describing how and why Facebook works (and why it is arguably a work of genius), it is also very preoccupied with the several lawsuits that Zuckerberg withstood in the early years of his great success. One of the best things about this movie is that it dramatizes the depositions of such lawsuits. Since depositions are recorded and everything occurs under Oath there is no reason to believe that any of the dialogue in them is made up. That means Mark and everybody else actually said everything that he says in this movie. It must have been an event to be in those rooms. No doubt, Aaron Sorkin, a master of smart sharp dialogue (The American President, The West Wing) was inspired to write this movie after seeing them.

Mark Zuckerberg (portrayed here by Jesse Eisengard in a way that reminded me of Robert Downey Jr.’s take on Sherlock Holmes) is a Harvard student with great intellectual potential. He also happens to be young and stupid. One thing he is exceptionally good at is programming code for computers. One thing he is exceptionally poor at is communicating with other people. He may start off discussing a great idea but he either talks too fast, assumes to much, or is oblivious to the notion that the subject may not be interesting to the other person (like say the amount of geniuses in China). The other person gets annoyed. Zuckerberg gets frustrated. The other person becomes dismissive and Zuckerberg gets defensive. He may even say something that is mean. Not just mean but mean and effective in the way only intelligent insults can be. The girl, played by Rooney Mara walks out because he is an asshole. And he is in a way, but only in that innocent way the highly intelligent but socially ignorant can be when they know enough to be sure that they are smarter than most people (at one or several particular things) but are still ignorant of how other people will logically react when that fact is brought up. Zuckerberg doesn’t think the girl is stupid, he thinks she’s being stupid. If he can understand what he means why on earth can’t she? And why does she get so mad when he corrects her? He’s only doing it because she’s so insistent on being wrong all the time! Why, it’s enough to make one run home, get drunk, and blog about how much of a bitch she is. Which, by the way, is exactly how this movie starts. The date is completely fictional by the way but the makers are out to make a big ironic point about Mark Zuckerberg right from the start. That this guy, the creator of Facebook, the biggest social network in the world, was incapable of making friends. Oh well, neither was Michelangelo when he was painting the Sistine Chapel. 

So, what exactly are the crimes of Mark Zuckerberg that would make people want to hate him so. Well first of all there is FaceMash, a program devised by Zuckerberg that allowed the students at Harvard to compare the female students at the university to each other. Using an algorithm, the women are given a hotness rating. It’s invasive (he hacked into several houses on campus and stole the pictures), misogynistic (no men are compared), and wildly popular (It gets about 22,000 hits before it crashes the Harvard servers). In defense of Mark Zuckerberg I make three points. One, the website didn’t start anything mean that was new. We all compare people all the time whether in private just thinking about it or in public while gossiping with our friends. What Zuckerberg did was just make it much more convenient. Two, assuming arguendo that it is a misogynistic thing to compare women to each other, than Zuckerberg is guilty. But guys in general have done far worse than that before and always seem to find women who can conveniently forgive them of it. The difference is that Mark is a brilliant programmer, so when he enacted his immature revenge quite a lot of people saw it. The amount of people, not what he did, is what made it so bad. Third, although the movie doesn’t show it, I really doubt that it was only guys using Facemash. You don’t get 22,000 hits solely from dudes. Women were using it to. Don’t tell me they don’t compare as much as everybody else does. 

The second crime is the alleged stealing of the “idea” of Facebook. Now this lawsuit was complete bullshit. Mark was originally approached by a trio of well-connected Harvard students. They wanted Mark to be the programmer of their dating website, The Harvard Connection. In other words, they wanted Mark to do all of the work. It was never made clear in the movie just what these others kids would do for the site. When Mark went ahead and made his own site, they didn’t take their great idea and make a site of their own (even though they had the idea months before Mark had it), all they wanted to do was sue him. If I can make an analogy, lets say that somebody had the idea to sculpt a large statute of the biblical David, but didn't have the skill or drive to do it. So they enlist Michelangelo to do it for them. Then Michelangelo actually sculpts the damn thing, but at the end refuses to say he had any help. This somebody then claims credit saying that the idea was stolen. This is bullshit because it completely ignores the fact that the trio were incapable of ever manifesting their idea into an actual website. How infuriating. During the depositions, Mark makes a big deal of pointing out that Facebook contains completely original coding (Presumably because if Mark thought the other website was worth a damn, he wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of inventing his own.) At another point he stops in the middle of the deposition and comments that it is raining outside. The high price lawyer of his adversaries asks Mark whether he deserves his full attention. Mark responds:
“You have a part of my attention – the minimum amount needed. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook where my employees and I are doing things no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually and creatively capable of doing. Did I adequately answer your condescending question?” (Did I mention how much I like this guy?)
Unfortunately as it is pointed out to him at the end of the movie, the average jury knows nothing about computer programming and coding or what actually goes into creating a website. But they do know an arrogant prick when they see one. An associate played by Rashida Jones explains to Mark that she can get a jury to hate him within 10 minutes. The crew cut douchebags walk away with a 65 million dollar settlement. 

The third crime and most serious crime is Mark’s falling out with his best friend and co-founder of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin. Eduardo was Mark’s roommate and the original CFO of the company. Well, sort of. He donated $1,000 of his own money and was given the job of being the business end of the entire affair. Unfortunately, although he had the best of intentions, he didn’t really seem to know what he was doing. So when Sean Parker, the mogul behind Napster played by Justin Timberlake, shows up to impart the wisdom he had already learned from the big things he had done, Mark agrees with basically everything he says. I kept thinking of the old Henry Adams saying, “A friend in power, is a friend lost.” Eduardo, because he fails to grasp exactly what facebook means and what it can mean, (let’s also not forget that he doesn’t know anything about computers or programming) is left behind and eventually forced out of the company (It is unclear exactly how involved Zuckerberg was in this). Some of the best scenes in the movie again take place in the deposition room, where the feuding best friends trade barbs that are more tinged with heartbreak than they are with anger. It is said that this settlement was for an undisclosed amount. Perhaps it was settled amicably. 

Is it fair to make a “warts-and-all” biopic about somebody who is only twenty-six years old? I can remember a time when Bill Gates was considered part devil. Now he is regarded as a saint. Who knows what we will think of Zuckerberg ten years from now. After all, he did just give 100 million dollars to charity. I have always found people like Mark Zuckerberg fascinating. They rise and fall on a trait that allows them to excel in one area and at the same time limits them in others. Jesse Eisenberg’s performance suggests a hint of Asperger’s in Zuckerberg. He is a man of intense focus and work ethic. This is great for his art and business, but when he uses that type of energy in a social relationship it becomes exhausting to talk to him. But having said that, here’s a good question to ask as you watch this movie: Which one of these characters should a guy like Mark have “connected” with? The movie shows quite a lot of elite parties. Most characters do sex and stimulants and not much else. Elite Clubs put prospective members through weird and arbitrary hazings. A kid at a lecture doesn’t realize it was Bill Gates leading it. Is it really Mark’s problem that he can’t connect with these people? This is a particularly good question concerning the women who inhabit this picture. They exist mainly in groupie form. They inhabit the background of shots mainly getting drunk or high while the programmers (almost exclusively men) work in the foreground. They bring guys into public bathrooms for blowjobs on the first date. There’s a particularly telling scene when Mark is laying out a strategy for expanding facebook and the two women in the room ask if they can help. Mark flatly tells them “No” presumably because they know absolutely nothing about computers. Contrast all of the above people to Mark who spends his time being creative, working his ass off, and building his business. Sure he has a friend in Sean Parker who is a partier, but when Sean is arrested with cocaine and underage women, do you know where Mark is? He’s still in the office working his ass off. Perhaps we should stop focusing on what’s wrong with Mark. He just needs to meet somebody as cool as him. Someone like Melinda Gates for instance. In the meantime, he can definitely hang out with me. 

The Social Network is one of the year’s best films. It is a movie made by geniuses (Fincher and Sorkin) about a genius. It should definitely get Oscar nods for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Writing, and perhaps acting nods for Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake depending on how thick the field is. It is exceedingly interesting to watch. At times I couldn’t help but lean forward in my seat to be further engrossed in the story. At other times I was laughing and applauding while everyone else in the theater was completely silent. Above all it is the best-edited movie of the year. It moves seamlessly across several storylines with minimal confusion and great dramatic effect. It is the best David Fincher movie since “Fight Club” and the first time I enjoyed a Jesse Eisenberg performance. As for Justin Timberlake, I think it is fair to say that he has officially graduated from being a commodity crafted by marketers and sold to unsuspecting teens. He has become a legitimate actor and is evident by his willingness to take small parts in interesting movies as opposed to large parts in really dumb ones. One more thing, remember that girl in the first scene. That’s Rooney Mara and she has been cast as the next Lisbeth Salandar in Fincher’s upcoming version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” I can sort of see that. Knock on Wood.