The Social Network (2010)

As the boy wonder who invented Facebook in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg was the world’s youngest-ever, self-made billionaire. He was also, at least according to The Social Network, a bona fide genius whose brilliance was matched by a cruelty borne of insecurity and resentment. And this deeply ambivalent portrait of Zuckerberg was in 2010, predating what would become Facebook’s exceedingly complicated relationship with, well, everyone.

The Social Network packs a wallop, a dense and engrossing tale ostensibly about its time, but one powered by themes that are timeless. Its lacerating wit and insights stem from the collaboration of two great auteurs in American cinema: director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.

And speaking of America (go with me), the movie also happens to be distinctly American both in tone and subject, immersed in a paradoxical mindset that reveres individualism but craves acceptance; praises innovation yet demands profit above all else. The core irony here, of course, is that a social phenomenon presumably celebrating friendship and interactive communication would be the creation of a nearly friendless misanthrope. Or maybe it’s always the lonely who are propelled to invent such things. In some ways, The Social Network is an updating of 1941’s Citizen Kane (coincidentally made by a boy wonder of his time), another esteemed yarn about an American tycoon as antihero.

Based on Ben Mezrich‘s 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal, the film unfolds at Harvard in 2003. Mark (Jesse Eisenberg) and his girlfriend, Erica (Rooney Mara), are having dinner in a noisy bar; it’s clear this is no match made in Ivy League heaven. Mark, prickly and socially awkward, is obsessed with breaking into one of the university’s all-male social clubs. Erica can barely get a word in amid his rapid-fire talk and a moodiness that swings from arrogance to self-loathing and back again. She dumps him before the meal is over.

Mark retreats to his dorm room to get drunk. By 2 a.m. the next morning, he has hacked into Harvard’s computer database, gathered headshots of hundreds of female students, and devised a site whereby the male student body can rate which girls are the hottest. After some tweaks and the financial help of Mark’s best friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield in a breakout performance), the enterprise eventually morphs into something less misogynous and called “The Facebook.”

It quickly spreads nationwide, but not without ruffling the well-coiffed feathers of Harvard twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer pulling double duty) who already had approached Mark about crafting a similar website. The venture also attracts the attention of Napster founder (remember Napster?) Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake\), a coke-addled charmer who wields a Svengali-like hold.

The Social Network is that rare creature in which truly divergent talents fit together beautifully. Sorkin, whose fierce and punchy dialogue won him an Academy Award for adapted screenplay, finds an ideal vehicle in Eisenberg, one of the smartest actors around. He plays Zuckerberg as an exposed nerve. Both script and actor are well served by Fincher, whose meticulous, visually lush direction lends an air of Shakespearean tragedy. The production is excellent all around, particularly the work of cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth and an Oscar-winning music score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

Fincher and Sorkin also hit upon an ingenious narrative device, framing much of the story in grim conference rooms where Mark, Eduardo and others are mired in depositions and lawsuits. The structure allows us to hopscotch back and forth between past and present, building toward a coda as withering as it is inevitable.