Kids Today: The Social Network

Two artistic styles that, separate from one another, I've found obnoxious in the past - David Fincher, who found profundity in the grotesque and banal before becoming an Oscar-baiting softy and Aaron Sorkin, best known as a smartass writer of trite melodramas on the big and small screen - form an effective synthesis in The Social Network, aka "The Facebook Movie" (even though "The Mark Zuckerberg Movie" is more accurate and less reductive, but anyway). It's not that their temperaments compliment each other so much as they cancel each other out - Fincher's ice cold detachment effectively counterbalances Sorkin's hacky, show off writing style, while Sorkin supplies Fincher's stoic seriousness with a sense of life and energy. In tandem they've created perhaps the best "Give me an Oscar!" movie in a while, though that's admittedly a bit of faint praise.

One thing that I think is important before continuing: The Social Network is not, ostensibly, a movie about "the Facebook" - that would be boring. I feared that it would be based on the trailer released earlier in the year, but it's a movie about the people who made Facebook. There is a distinction, and a fairly large one at that. Though it's an ingrained part of the world today - honestly, it's hard to imagine going to a party without being tagged in a photo album the next day, and it's hard to meet someone without asking them if they have a Facebook - analyzing Facebook as social phenomenon when it's been around less than a decade would be pretty much a futile effort, and thankfully Sorkin and Fincher avoid that line of thought, for the most part. Though the movie can't resist making a few sweeping generalizations about connection in the digital age, mercifully these examinations comes in the context of Zuckerberg as a human being as opposed to a sociological one. What I find disappointing is that The Social Network is ultimately a combination of two rather cliched stories: triumph of the underdog, of the nerd vs. the jock(s), and a tale of a person who gains everything and loses his soul in the process. And I don't think it brings enough new ideas to these older-than-dirt stories to be a really great movie.

If The Social Network is a great movie - and I don't think it is by any means - it's because of Jesse Eisenberg's performance as Mark Zuckerberg. He so perfectly balances arrogance and insecurity, loneliness and congeniality, bitterness and charisma, that he rises above the rather mediocre material. We're introduced to Zuckerbeg while he's having a typical Sorkin rapid fire conversation with his girlfriend in a bar, and he says something obnoxious about his being allowed into clubs and introducing his girlfriend to "people she wouldn't meet otherwise", which she (understandably) takes a large degree of offense to, and walks out on him, though not before saying to him "When you're alone, it won't be because you're a nerd, it'll be because you're an asshole". I have no issues with taking artistic license, but the real Zuckerbeg has claimed that he had no interest in joining college clubs, and I see no reason to not believe that. Why would he? It's clear he planned to make a ton of money working with computers, so why would he waste time with a bunch of spoiled little shits while they do body shots and play beer pong when he was a blatant careerist, even as an undergrad? But Fincher and Sorkin don't really see it that way, and early on the movie includes a rather hackneyed juxtaposition between Zuckerberg and his group of computer nerd friends working on a website and one of those illicit college parties - you know the kind, with blasting techno music in a darkened hall, where super skinny girls take off all their clothes (in slow motion to boot!), where the cool kids play strip poker while doing ecstasy and - wait for it! - smoke pot, and have sex with each other, and do all those super cool things that I'd imagine Fincher and Sorkin were never invited to do, because this rather unfortunate sequence is played with hostility. Basically, it's a cliched movie party that exhibits how out of touch the two of them are from any kind of modern reality - they're just basically saying "Look at these kids, with their Northfaces and their marijuana and their alcohol and their sexy parties and their internet" - not a particularly unique point to be making, and it honestly makes Sorkin and Fincher look like a pair of cranky fuddy duddys. I think this speaks more to their view of "the cool kids" than to Zuckerberg's, which is fine, but to take such extreme artistic license while projecting your own anti-social anxieties onto another human being is borderline character defamation.

Not to say Zuckerberg isn't worthy of some criticism - he's a ladder climber who stomped on people on his way to the top. He perhaps not un-coincidentally donated $100,000,000 to Newark public schools about a week before the film's release, and I don't think you need to have a PHD to deduce that he was probably trying to pre-emptively repair his image in light of a film that is, really, extremely critical of him - he's called an asshole or something to that effect no less than 20 times during the course of the movie. I don't know how serious a flaw in terms of storytelling that is, but I think this is fairly representative of A) the current hatred of the wealthy elites and B) the resentment of genuine innovators in this country, which admittedly isn't exactly a new development. Zuckerberg created - and he did create it - a tool that fulfilled such a primary function and spoke to such a profound need that it's hard to imagine a world without it. Coming up with something so simple is undoubtedly a form of genius, and if he's as much of a back-stabbing shit as Sorkin and Fincher make him out to be, well, welcome to America. That's how you make billions of dollars. Bill Gates "stole" an idea in the same way Zuckerberg did - and, like Gates, Zuckerberg improved the initial idea, made it simpler, more accessible. You don't become a billionaire by being nice and doing everything by the book. It just doesn't work that way.

What I've frequently found most bothersome about David Fincher's sensibility is his detached point of view, but that detachment helps diffuse some of the idiocies of Sorkin's script. Sorkin's script is just so conventional, and even the interwoven structure - which has invited comparisons to Citizen Kane - feels like it's there strictly to impress. The dialogue is the driving force of The Social Network, and I think it speaks to Sorkin's lack of ability that many of the film's best moments are wordless ones. An event so frequently cited as proof positive of Zuckerbeg's dickishness and cockery, the now famous "I'm CEO, bitch" incident, is played as such an expression of youthful arrogance that it's heartbreaking, with Zuckerberg looking over the cards with the aforementioned expression on it alone in the office of Facebook and wondering what the hell he was thinking - and Eisenberg absolutely nails this poignant moment. Fincher works Sorkin's script, somehow, as it's easy to imagine another director either playing the film as either too much of a celebration or condemnation of Zuckerberg, but Fincher's detachment gives way to a sense of objectivity. Though Sorkin does not deny Zuckerberg's humanity, I still feel like he's a little too harsh on him; yes, he's a bit of a jerk, but he was also a sophomore in college when he suddenly found himself in charge of a multi-million dollar - and, soon enough, multi-billion dollar - corporation. We can cut the guy a little slack I think, as I'm sure there are lots of people who, if they had their every move from their early 20s enshrined in the popular lexicon, wouldn't come out smelling like roses either.

The backbone of The Social Network is a great and truly amazing story, a real life account so littered with drama that it was almost tailor made for a movie. However, Fincher's directorial disconnect helps keep the film from becoming a soap opera, and it is this very disconnect that creates a feeling of isolation, which in turn helps align our sympathies with the lonely Zuckerberg. Though I feel Sorkin and Fincher are too hard on Zuckerberg throughout the picture, ultimately they understand that his know it all exterior is a facade concealing a much more complex person. "You're not an asshole, Mark, you're just trying so hard to be" , a lawyer tells him, echoing his ex-girlfriend's harsh words to him in the beginning of the picture, and though this line is more than a tad sappy - I was so embarrassed upon hearing it that I looked around for a place to hide - it still works, and it's still necessary to the duo's portrait of Zuckerberg. Most affecting is the film's final moment, (again, wordless) which shows Zuckerberg looking over his ex-girlfriend's Facebook profile and adding her as a friend, and hitting refresh on an endless loop. The implications of a man who brought so many people together being unable to forge a human connection himself elevates this insider account of the creation of a social networking site to a more general statement on the nature of loneliness, and is all the richer for it.