The Social Network

No matter what reservations I may have had about watching a film detailing the creation of Facebook (a site on which I do have an account and use to share photos with friends), I was completely won over by a film that is littered by Aaron Sorkin's trademark dialogue. The opening scene was enough to do it for me, in which Mark Zuckerberg and his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend engage in a twisting conversation that operates on multiple levels before swinging off in different directions. It was the West Wing all over again and I was smitten.

On the surface the film is about Mark Zuckerberg (the Facebook CEO) and how he created Facebook at Harvard University in 2003 / 2004. The story is not as simple as this though. Since several different groups of students were interested in creating online social networking sites at the time, the story is told from the point of view of a series of flashbacks from a later date at which Zuckerberg is being sued by most of the people who knew him at the time. Rather than being a story about web-development, it's a story about people battling each other to be king of a new online world - i.e. a story about characters.

The main character is of course Mark Zuckerberg. I don't know what Zuckerberg is like in person, but if Jessie Eisenberg is playing him true to life then he's an annoying nerd who always has a witty one-liner, a complete grasp of internet computing and an inability to communicate with real people. You might think that the story of Zuckerberg's young life is a story of affluence and roller-coaster rides to fame and riches, but 'The Social Network' paints him as a guy who only ever wanted to be accepted by people who matter to him. It is after his girlfriend dumps him that he creates the first beta version of Facebook, despite all the fame and riches and groupies he stumbles over it is still people like her to whom he looks for acceptance - the film's final scene being a poignant demonstration of that.

Whether this is true to real life or not is a question I don't have the information to answer. What I do know is that this film gives an in depth portrayal of an intriguing character as well as an eye-opening overview of the development of one of the world's most popular and successful websites (the truth of which appears to be largely validated by reading the Wiki entry for Facebook). And if that's not enough for you, it's written by Aaron Sorkin.