THE SOCIAL NETWORK

In late 2003 Harvard undergraduate and socially awkward outsider Mark Zuckerberg is dumped by his girlfriend, sets up a malicious chain blog to humiliate her and in doing so begins the process of evolving the phenomenon called Facebook.

Although set in the ultra-modern world of cyber systems, this is in fact an old-fashioned tale of business opportunism, class distinction and the avaricious nature of money making. Despite all the computer geekery going on, its significant that much of this film takes place in corporate boardrooms where people in sharp suits help the various warring factions sue each other for billions. It doesn’t matter what generation we’re in – it always ends up with the lawyers in their chic offices.

The other thing rather old fashioned about David Fincher’s splendid film – refreshingly so – is its delight in word play. This whole movie is a series of snappy conversations, sometimes delivered so rapidly you can barely keep up with them. Even the techie bits aren’t dull. Writer Aaron Sorkin’s deftly-written screenplay develops character, plot, context and motivation in a manner so witty, bitchy and erudite its like a modern tribute to All About Eve. You can almost imagine the ghost of Joseph L Mankiewicz nodding his approval at the acidic one-liners and spot-on observations.

Despite the verbosity the film is never static – director David Fincher keeps his players moving; from dorm-room, bar, restaurant, apartment, classroom, office, stairwell and even the Henley Regatta, nobody is ever sitting at a computer screen for too long. It’s all so visual and so fast you barely notice that various people just talk to each other for two hours. I found myself wondering about the last time I had watched a film in a multiplex that didn’t involve shootings explosions or fights. I’m afraid I couldn’t remember.

Such are the pace of things that the film could have gotten very complicated, but Fincher and Sorkin are smart enough to keep characterisation to the fore. One suspects the film’s title is not just about the purpose of Facebook but about the literal social network in the Harvard village itself, with all its social elites and by-invitation-only fratboy clubs that apply a ruthless caste system to the status of all the students. It’s the various degrees of success or failure, ambition or animosity to which these characters relate to this rather more real life and time-honoured social network that ends up defining their subsequent motivations and actions.
Fincher’s real strength here, however, is in defining an era. He seems to be good at this, having made no fewer than two era-defining films in the 90s with Se7en and Fight Club. As it’s released in 2010, The Social Network is not strictly speaking a Noughties movie, but it will probably still go down as the film that best defines that reckless decade when very bright young people stumbled across ways of making ridiculous sums of money without actually producing anything material. It also cleverly contrasts the old and new Harvard (and by extension the old and new America) where established principle, represented by Zuckerberg’s loyal, gullible, college mate and business partner Eduardo Savaren, clash with the hustling new cyber punk entrepreneurs represented by Zuckerberg himself and especially by Napster creator Sean Parker as his more worldly Mephistopheles.

The acting by the young cast is terrific. Zuckerberg, as played by Jesse Eisenberg, comes across as socially inept, jealous, humourless and opportunistic; yet he is somehow still sympathetic – motivated more by a need for acceptance than anything genuinely malicious. It’s Justin Timberlake’s Sean Parker who ultimately comes over as the real villain – a cunning, narcissistic schmoozer who spots a good thing and doesn’t mind who he rolls over to get a piece of it.