The Social Network

Facebook. What a generational phenomenon. The ability to follow each other's every move. The ease of discovering personal information and never needing to 'catch-up' with people you haven't seen in the flesh for years. We rely on it. We live by it. It was only appropriate that it should be made into a screen play. Every movie-goer in the world can relate to this viral phenomenon. Even better than this, it stems from the fascinating tale of twenty year old Mark Zuckerberg, a sophomore at Harvard with apparently nothing better to do. 


The story begins with the making of an offensive hot-or-not type website created by a marginally intoxicated, recently dumped computer-science major. The website got so many hits on the night of its launch, it crashed the Harvard server. At this point, Mark is approached by Harvard upperclassmen looking to create an exclusive social networking site available only to Harvard students. From here Facebook is created, Sean Parker - founder of Napster - comes in as partner, Zuckerberg makes a lot of friends, loses more and gets sued twice. 


The story of Facebook's rise is told in an interesting fashion. In creating this multi-billion dollar internet company, Zuckerberg was sued by two sets of people involved. It is through these lawsuits that the story is told. While this isn't an entirely new method of recap-story-telling, it fit the nature of this narrative well. The complication arises in balancing the story as told between the two lawsuits. Lucky for the viewer, this isn't anyone's first whack at it. Director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin, do a seamless job of moving from the story to the lawsuits. Jesse Eisenberg carries a wonderful deadpan ambivalence as Zuckerberg and Andrew Garfield, as Eduardo Saverin - co-founder and student at Harvard, provides a wonderful point of chemistry for the film. Most of North America is grateful for their pairing. 


If there is a moral to the story and I'm reading it right, it's as old as time. Greed, jealousy, arrogance. As old as Cain and Able (that's for you Dad). And unless you have somehow escaped the life-sucking trap that is Facebook, you, as the viewer, can't find much distance from this greed, jealousy and arrogance. You're a part of that story. You've helped make it what it is. I'm not distancing myself from this as I accuse you of being a part of it. I'm there as much as you are. And here the producers are, forcing us to confront this as we watch the story unfold; and we're not even aware. 


Filmmakers are amazing.