I'm sure there are few people who don't know that this film is about the origins and subsequent legal disputes over the ownership of facebook. Mark Zuckerberg created the website at Harvard in 2004, with the financial help of a friend and some creative help (or so this film assumes) unwittingly provided by a trio of upper class jocks. Zuckerberg is played by Jesse Eisenberg, the likeable lead from Zombieland. As such, although he's frequently gauche and occasionally a bit of a tit, 'Zuckerberg' seems largely likeable. It's unclear how similar 'Zuckerberg' is to Zuckerberg. And that's the only downside to a fast-paced, dialogue-heavy movie: I would much have preferred to know that what I was watching was a close approximation to the truth - though, for reasons the postscript explains, that truth is valuable and closely guarded. Facebook is so much a part of most of our lives that its origins are bound to be a subject of curiosity. But, even taken largely as a work of fiction, The Social Network is well worth seeing. It's not a cinematic movie, though, so one to add to the rental list rather than struggling to see it before it leaves the big screen.
I thought that you neglected the fact that the sound track was by Trent Reznor, and was really good.
ReplyDeleteHey Neil. I can't say I really noticed the music during the film, and given Reznor's normally distinctive sound I was surprised to see his name pop up at the end. It's no Natural Born Killers.
ReplyDeletePossibly my film of the year so far, endlessly fascinating and doesn't talk down to the audience. Jesse Eisenberg is becoming one of my favourite young actors - have you seen him in the Squid and the Whale?
ReplyDelete@Ben - No, I haven't seen that. I have added it to my rental list. I really enjoyed him and Woody Harrelson together in Zombieland. I'm slightly surprised by how highly people are rating The Social Network, not because it's not great - it is - but because to me it seemed the sort of thing that would work as well, if not better, as a TV mini-series. (It certainly lacks the cinematic greatness of something like Enter the Void!)
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