Big Screen Peter: The Social Network

Editor’s note: Peter Lewis has agreed to use whatever it is you call his writing style to provide some measure of analysis to those folks who still go to a theater to see a movie.

review by Peter Lewis

After seeing “The Social Network,” a new film chronicling the birth of Facebook directed by David Fincher, it took a few hours of decompression before I could start writing about it. This isn’t a commentary on the intellectual or emotional depth of the film, but one of ambivalence. Despite the laudatory comments it has been consistently earning from other reviewers, I left the theater rather nonplussed with the whole film.

On one hand, it is certainly an interesting examination of the modern (anti) social tendencies. Further, the dynamic that gave rise to the biggest internet phenomenon of the past decade is, at least on the surface, interesting as well.

Yet, there were multiple points during the film where I caught myself idly wondering why I was there, why any of what was being shown on screen mattered. It wasn’t as much a drift towards introspective existentialism as it was pure boredom (though one must wonder whether existentialism itself is the natural byproduct of boredom).

And this critical reaction is a bit paradoxical, because the film is quite good on many levels. Jesse Eisenberg, in the role of Facebook founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is twitchingly affecting. His arrogant and abrasive logic-fueled conversations unknowingly waylay the innocent bystanders with whom he interacts. He is a driven, anti-social programmer that somehow creates the new social paradigm.

By all rights, Eisenberg should be the key to the film. But it’s Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake that truly stand out in “The Social Network.” Garfield plays Zuckerberg’s best friend and Facebook co-founder. He tackles his role as the trampled and betrayed friend with an innocent openness to emotion rarely seen in cinema (though his current oeuvre is rather slight, one must hope that this is a harbinger of things to come).

Timberlake, on the other hand, plays Napster creator, Sean Parker. He takes to this role as a wheedling entrepreneur like a duck to water. Holding court with aplomb, he creates an impeccable aura that entrances Zuckerberg. Like a decidedly vain Uriah Heep wielding power over Mr. Wickfield, he is bewitchingly spectacular in his faux-cloying.

Of course, it should almost go without saying that the film is wonderfully shot by Fincher.  The veteran director of such Hollywood classics as “Se7en,” “Fight Club,” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” elegantly weaves the lonely tale of Facebook’s meteoric growth and resulting legal fallout. By lacing the raw emotion of the deposition hearings with the “real time” portrayal of the creation itself, Fincher exposes the sobering truth—or at least a cinematic approximation of it—behind the creation of this massive social network.

The tragedy of the film is obvious: here lies a youth, so obsessed with the illusory notion of “making it,” that he burns the one person who had always accepted him. While the pain of Saverin is obvious on the face of Garfield, it never quite seems to register with Zuckerberg. There is always a hint of blissful naivety. However, when when the film finally closes, there is a tinge of pity for that billionaire sitting alone with his computer.

Eliciting that slight approximation of empathy for an addled and arrogant youth wealthy beyond comprehension is a true cinematic feat. But there should be more. It’s the failure to coherently invest the audience in the tragic character of Zuckerberg that keeps this film from obtaining cinematic Valhalla.

• The Social Network is playing at the Carmike 14 and the Malco Cinema 12 in Fort Smith, and the Malco Van Buren Cinema. Link here for time and ticket info.

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