For the record, it really bugs me that I saw this opening day and I just now typed this review today.
Wow. That’s one way to sum up this movie. Direction, writing, acting, cinematography, yes I said cinematography, all top notch.
Essentially ‘The Social Network’ is dramatized version of a few of the accounts given about the creation of Facebook (previously known as ‘The Facebook’). Essentially Mark Zuckerburg (Jessie Eisenberg) starts out as a sophomore at Harvard who has just been dumped by his girlfriend (Erica Mooney), the dialogue from that opening scene gives you an idea of what you’re in for in the next two hours. It’s what Mark does in reaction to that break up that kind of triggers the rest of the film, even if Erica is just a fictional person in real life.
One can easily tell you where the plot goes from there, but I rather tell you why you should see it instead of telling you what you’ll see, I don’t want to ruin too much.
Cinematography is something I only considered to be important in action movies, but this movie proves that it can add to any genre. Everything is so crisp and so clean and this hard work really pays off to a sequence in the middle featuring a row boat race, sounds dull, but combine the pace, the score, and the cinematography and you get an amazing sequence.
The smartest decision about the movie was to shift back in forth between the scenes discussing the dual lawsuits that Zuckerberg is facing from his best friend (the new Spiderman Andrew Garfield) along with Cameron/Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer) and their associate Divya Narendra (Max Minghella). How they got a British guy to convincingly play a character named Eduardo is beyond me. Anyway, the pacing allows for some very interesting transitions between past and their present, its more than “Okay, let tell us about Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake)”, “Okay I will tell you about Sean Parker”, the scenes just flow into each other seamlessly.
As for acting, David Fincher managed to get a great performance out of everyone he casted, and I mean everyone, including some of the people playing minor characters and it really pays off. One can easily right off a lot of the characters in this film as assholes, but everyone manages to keep their character likable and interesting. The Winklevoss twins could have easily just been your college douches from any crappy college movie, but Armie Hammer plays them both wonderfully. Justin Timberlake is a scene-stealer as Sean Parker (the creator of Napster) from his introduction all throughout the movie. Andrew Garfield has the American accent down to a tee, and plays it great as the supporting friend, but when its time for him to take charge and stand up for himself, he does it well in one of the best scenes of the movie. Jessie Einsenberg is a machine as Zuckerburg, just cold and piercing, in some scenes, while in others he plays it more vulnerable and sympathetic which gives much meaning to one of the last lines, “You’re not an asshole, you’re just trying so hard to be” spoken by Marilyn Deply (Rashida Jones) a 2nd year associate to the lawyer firm working with Zuckerberg. Of course this goes against the “You’re an asshole” which came from his girlfriend at the beginning. By the end of the movie you probably would have picked one of the two statements to be true.
The cherry on top would be the score that just adds so much to the scenes, whether it’s a sense of fun, adds some gravity to the tenseness of certain scenes, and if you’re like me gives you something to listen to while doing some computer programming. It’s definitely worth listening to.
The movie’s only flaw is that the story itself doesn’t carry that much weight, its not that you don’t care, its just I never found myself concerned for much and while you can’t really blame the film makers for it that since most of this actually happened, it just ends up keeping it from perfection.
One can give this movie so many praises, but in the end this will definitely get one of the best picture slots at the Oscars and Aaron Sorkin is definitely walking away with the best adapted screenplay Oscar. Is it the movie of the year, no, but its definitely up there and a must see.
Final score: 3.5/4
