The Social Network (2010) Review

Watching The Social Network is a sublime experience. Everything about this film exudes quality, experience, hard-work, polish and just an effortless brilliance that is quite frankly a frightening thing to behold. David Fincher is the talented man behind the helm, his previous works on such films as Se7en, Fight Club and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (to name but a few) almost pale in comparison to the work done here. He not so much directs more he films fiction in such a way to tear down the walls of celluloid and make it as if the story is unfolding and your involved.

The casting is surprisingly brilliant, every one is exactly who they are playing, never did I think ‘oh that Justin Timberlake plays a real good jerk’, I thought ‘that Sean Parker is a real jerk’. But of course it is Jessie Eisenberg who plays the borderline social retard of Mark Zuckerman who steals the show, anyone who compared him in anyway to Michael Cera should eat their proverbial hat because Eisenberg is delivering Oscar material here and years if not lifetimes away from anything Cera could ever accomplish.

Though it is the words which shine as a true hero here, penned by Aaron Sorkin, a man whom is certainly no stranger to praise (writer of nearly every episode of The West Wing). The Social Network’s razor sharp and enviably tight script does not waste a second. I could quite literally not think of a single wasted scene, nor even a line of dialogue that did not contribute to the narrative or character development. Also the script never slows down and patronize the audience, if you can’t keep up you might get lost, so the easily distracted or stupid among you need not apply.

Even simple things prove themselves to be an indispensable part of this film’s experience. Like the soundtrack composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Rose, it’s the perfect compliment to the things on screen. It varies from subtle cues here and there to pounding, powerful selections which are just as addictive as Facebook itself.

Speaking of which it has taken four paragraphs for me to even mention the titular website and perhaps with good reason. This movie is not so much a Facebook movie, as it is a people movie. Certainly it shows the inns and outs of creating a website, from mere thought in mind to billion dollar corporation, the thousands of lines of code and the money behind it. But it’s much more than that, The Social Network is exactly that a movie about the social networks of one man and the people around him who have become a part of it, for better or worse.

Rating: 5 out of 5.