There’s just one reason why The Social Network is being shown in Cyprus multiplexes, and that reason is Facebook. It doesn’t star anyone who’s familiar to the Great Filmgoing Public (except Justin Timberlake, but he’s far better-known as a singer and it’s only a supporting role anyway). It’s not a sequel or a remake, not in 3-D, not a horror film or a lowbrow comedy, and not about a posh girl who learns how to street-dance. There’s a very narrow range of films that appear at the multiplex, and The Social Network wouldn’t ordinarily be within that range – but this is ‘the Facebook movie’, telling how Mark Zuckerberg founded (or co-founded) the social-networking site while still a student at Harvard, and few things are trendier than Facebook. The film is dazzling, witty and hugely enjoyable; in fact, there’s just one reason why The Social Network isn’t the best film of the year. And that reason is Facebook.
I don’t mean because the film has a trivial subject, in fact I mean the opposite. It’s a massive subject. Whether you find Facebook liberating, deeply depressing or just a case of the mainstream discovering something – the notion of a second life online – which computer geeks have known since the 80s, it’s an epoch-defining phenomenon and everyone should have an opinion on it. Trouble is, the film doesn’t. You may live half your life on Facebook, and you’ll love The Social Network. You may think Facebook is obscene, the symptom of a debased culture, and you’ll love The Social Network. You may be a Martian who happened to crash-land in a multiplex and decided to watch the movie, and you’ll love The Social Network (though you’ll wonder what this “Facebook” thingy is, and why everyone talks so fast). The film has no solid take on its subject, which may be a subtle critique, tweaking Facebookers’ inflated sense of their own importance – but more probably it’s just a cop-out, preferring not to lose any demographic by taking sides.
That aside, Social Network is magnificent. The script by Aaron Sorkin – a specialist in wordy-but-witty dialogue, mainly for TV – dances through each scene in a graceful profusion of banter. The editing, the urgent percussive score, and of course the direction by David Fincher, putting it all together, juggles time-lines immaculately, juxtaposing the rise and rise of Facebook with legal hearings in which Zuckerberg (gloriously played by Jesse Eisenberg) is being sued by his former best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) as well as a pair of identical twins (both played by one actor, Armie Hammer) who claim he stole the idea from them. I recall seeing Fincher’s Fight Club a decade ago and being mesmerised by the speed and fluidity of his brush-strokes, the seemingly inevitable ease with which points were made and connections underlined; Social Network has some of that too. I’ve seen it twice, and could happily watch it 10 more times.
Yet the film is superficial; or maybe it’s better to say that it makes lots of great points incidentally but makes only one, superficial point explicitly – that socially-awkward geeks create cyber-miracles, labouring for hours on their computers, in order to be socially accepted and, specifically, in order to get girls. Rooney Mara co-stars as the One Girl who rules Zuckerberg’s psyche, the girl who prompts him to start Facebook (or an early version of Facebook) after she dumps him, the girl he tries to punish through his work – “We have to expand!” – after she rejects him, the girl he’s still trying vainly to reach in the quietly devastating ending. Yet he’s not exactly a romantic; he just wants what he can’t have, just as he longs to be part of the exclusive Harvard clubs that shut him out because he isn’t rich or athletic. Facebook, says the film, was borne of resentment and a longing for revenge – an unhealthy snobbery reflected, despite its surface egalitarianism, in the emphasis on fenced-off groups and cliques of ‘friends’.
Friendship, of course, features strongly in the movie; alleged “best friends” end up suing each other, tying in with Facebook’s debasement of the word ‘friend’ – and words also feature strongly, the often-hollow meanings of words, as when Cameron (the more noble of the twins) doesn’t want to sue because he and his brother are “gentlemen of Harvard”. Despite its reluctance to take sides, Social Network is clearly dubious about the brave new world ushered in by Zuckerberg and his fellow geeks, a world that blurs reality – whether the reality of words or the reality of being at a party then “re-living” it later by watching the video. Sorkin can’t resist some gratuitous swipes at modern culture, as when the Harvard Glee Club are singing Boyz II Men and someone asks “Whatever happened to Cole Porter and Irving Berlin?” (it’s not the character speaking; it’s the movie). On the other hand, those who dismiss cyber-culture out of hand – like Harvard president Larry Summers, shown as an ignorant thug – are also wrong. You can fear this stuff, but you can’t dismiss it.
Yet The Social Network isn’t really about Facebook culture; it’s about Mark Zuckerberg – not the real-life Zuckerberg, who’s disowned the movie, but Zuckerberg as a tragic hero, a self-centred genius who only wants to be loved, as well as a creator who loses control of his own creation. The film does something quite bold, keeping Mr. Facebook front-and-centre in the first half then shifting to Timberlake’s slimy, fast-talking Sean Parker as the money-men (and lawyers) come in, Facebook takes off and Zuckerberg recedes into the background. Lots of things get lost as a result: a close friendship, the casual relationships of college life – but also his motive in building the site in the first place, a motive both pathetic and touchingly innocent: to make friends, and maybe find a girl. There’s a scene about halfway through, just as the site is becoming well-known, when Mark and Eduardo are sitting in a lecture and two hot girls lean in from the next row, going ‘Oh wow, are you the guy who made Facebook?’ and asking them to meet for drinks later – and Zuckerberg does nothing at all, just sits there immobile, yet you know it’s the greatest moment of his life and he’s blissfully happy in that single moment. It’s heartbreaking, and has nothing to do with Facebook.
