Zuckerberg is a genius, a billionaire and a social revolutionary and yet none of these extraordinary aspects of his life alter the fact that he is tone-deaf when it comes to social situations: for example, you may as well throw a drink over a girl if your tools for impressing her are flaunting how much smarter than you are of her.
David Fincher (Se7en, Zodiac, Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) has done a brilliant job of making The Social Network as smart and brilliant as its hero and it plays in just the same Aspergic way. It is impatient, cold and arrogant. It doesn't care if you keep up with it. If you lose track then that is your loss.
What's incredible about this film is that it runs at 1hr 55mins and yet at the end it feels as though you've been sat there for an hour. The film deals with classic themes of betrayal, greed, rise to power and revolution This is in no small way to do with the excellent work in editing and sound design in the film. Fincher and his team used up-to-the-minute technology to alter the speed and tone of dialogue to the syllable. This makes for an uncompromising pace, which moves Aaron Sorkin's already zippy script that little bit of extra ignition.
The performances in this film are stellar. Jesse Eisenberg is beautifully precise as Mark Zuckerberg, Justin Timberlake is seductively slimey as Sean Parker. However Andrew Garfield steals the show as Eduardo Saverin - the emotional heart of the piece. He is technically aware like Zuckerberg, emotionally aware like Parker and yet his only flaw is that he is an honest businessman. Parker uses his emotional awareness to screw Saverin, Zuckerberg uses his technical awareness to intimidate Saverin and yet we do not pity Eduardo. This is where Andrew Garfield steps in. With a lesser actor, Saverin could have come across like Butters always falling prey and appearing weak and yet perservering. Instead, he remains powerful because of his perserverence and honesty. Every open-mouthed glance, the way he bites his top lips after every statement, blinking faster and faster his eyes widening as he gets trapped deeper and deeper into a bad situation caused by his own good intentions.
Sorkin's screenplay is impeccable. It's aggressive and zippy and in an age when dialogue has been dumbed down to compensate for slower, lazier audiences, the action and dialogue move forward at a brisk pace. It deals with complicated and unfamiliar ideas such as web strategy, computer programming and big finance and yet Sorkin makes it all clear. Interestingly, I don't believe the story is intended to be followed, yet the audience is there to be dragged along with the story of these three characters just the like the rest of us in real life.
I read recently that facebook is simply "500 million people trapped in the imagination of one nerd"; I happen to think that the "nerd" in question is this generation's Charles Foster Kane. A rich and deeply flawed character that became the figurehead for a social revolution.
