Six years. That’s how long it took. In 2004 Mark Zuckerberg was just a guy that attended Harvard, and this year, in 2010, there was a major motion picture released about a significant portion of his life. He’s only 26 years old.
Director David Fincher jokingly called the film “The Citizen Kane of John Hughes movies.” And while the comparison might be lost on anyone under twenty or scoffed at by many a film buff, I’d say it’s pretty accurate. The title is meant to be ironic, a kid that barely has any friends comes along to redefine the very word. It’s pretty brilliant.
When they announced the “Facebook movie” film buffs issued a collective groan, but when you say a writer like Aaron Sorkin is attached to the script and land David Fincher in the director’s chair, the groan turns into a very curious “Huh?”
Fincher is a lot like Danny Boyle in that he’s constantly trying to redefine himself as a filmmaker. He pushes his own limits, he tries different genres, he never sets limits on his own creativity. And, like Boyle, sometimes he just doesn’t succeed. But, when he does, it’s a pretty amazing thing to watch.
To take a story that, essentially, is a group of people sitting around board rooms and spouting legalese at each other, and make it one of the most riveting pieces of cinema of the year takes true talent. And a script written by Aaron Sorkin. The man is a genius when it comes to dialogue. He uses words the same way a framer uses wood. Sure, the house looks lovely when it’s all painted and decorated, but it’s the beams you CAN’T see that keep the thing from crashing in on itself.
Jesse Eisenberg is getting a lot of recognition for his turn as Zuckerberg, and rightfully so. Dangerously close to Michael Cera-like territory, where he seems to just always play “that guy”, Eisenberg turns the tables and uses dry witted, too-smart-for -the-room nerdiness that people would have eventually crucified him with as a point of pride here, he completely owns it. Andrew Garfield turns in a solid supporting performance as Eduardo Saverin, Mark’s best friend turned enemy. He’s aloof enough to be empathetic and fierce enough to be believably heroic when he has to be. But, the best performance in the film belongs to Armie Hammer as the Winklevoss Twins. Something that could have easily come off as bully-ish and money grabbing, Hammer makes it not only tolerable, but easy to get behind as well.
It’s a rare thing to find a film that perfectly encapsulates the era in which it was set and filmed. Not to say there aren’t movies that don’t TRY, just that they usually fail miserably. Even rarer are films like this though, where the events we watch unfold are biographical, more or less.
I say “more or less” because of all the fuss that’s been made about Zuckerberg’s depiction in the film. If everything I’d heard going into the film was true, what I was going to see was a man out of control, obsessed with fame, fortune and sex. Played brilliantly by Jesse Eisenberg, the Zuckerberg we get is, instead, a socially awkward kid who is determined to prove to his ex-girlfriend, his peers, and to the world, that he matters. Now, I haven’t the slightest clue if that’s an accurate portrayal of Zuckerberg, but I think it nails the “new” model of man the internet has given birth to.
It has given us another reality where things like age, gender, beauty and money don’t really matter, because we are who we pretend to be. And, somehow, Facebook has legitimized this.
