The Social Network: What’s All the Buzz About?

I don’t get to see dramas in the theaters very often. I enjoy watching dramas with great acting, but I just can’t get anyone to see them with me (with the exception of the time I dragged my family to see Precious). So, after hearing the buzz about The Social Network, I searched around for a week until I finally found someone to go see it. Having never read a review of it (I usually don’t), I expected it to be an overdramatic, overacted attempt at making programming nerds look cool. Instead, what I found was an overdramatic and intricately crafted muddle of a film.

In The Social Network, David Fincher portrays the interpersonal struggles that accompanied Facebook during its rapid initial growth. The focal plot involves the growing divide between the reserved and quite Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and his outwardly confident but misguided companion, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield). I must say that I’m not a huge fan of Jesse Eisenberg. He’s one of a growing class of actors who seem to exclusively play pale, skinny, and awkward white boys unsure of their direction or purpose and who spend most of their time staring blankly at the ceiling with their hands in their pockets (along with Michael Cera). If you’ve ever seen Eisenberg in The Squid and the Whale, Adventureland, or Zombieland, you probably wonder if he can play anything else. That said, I was really confused with where his character was going. What is he trying to get at? Is he seeking revenge on the upper echelon of Harvard social structure? Or is he just another bored techno-geek?

Meanwhile, Andrew Garfield provides a stunning performance as Saverin, Zuckerberg’s initial business partner. It’s easy to feel sorry for him as he slowly becomes estranged from the company, but it’s painful to see how shortsighted he really turned out to be. Garfield plays a smart and keen entrepreneur who unfortunately grows more and more out of place as the story progresses, and yet he continues to be completely oblivious. In any other situation, Saverin's drive to push the company forward by monetizing it probably would seem to be the right decision, but, like Zuckerberg, he really doesn't have a clue what's going on, and it subtly shows.

As for the rest of the movie and its actors, I founded to be so dramatic to the point where it was almost tiring to watch. There’s a two-minute long scene of a Harvard rowing team competing against a Dutch boat accompanied by an industrial version of Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” (thanks, Trent Reznor) that left me perplexed as to what the preceding montage had to do with anything. I don’t know if it was intended as such, but I couldn’t stand the performance of Armie Hammer as both Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. It was like Tweedledum and Tweedledee walked into an Abercrombie catalog. There are similar moments of short bursts of emotion or random details that seem out of place. Yet, I enjoyed the striking cinematography and clever filmmaking overall. The movie made powerful use of lighting, accented by the eerie glow of computer screens.

As a self-admitted nerd who went to quite possibly one of the most introverted and technology-obsessed universities in the country, I’m often frustrated at the media’s portrayal of us as bespectacled, wired-in slobs with nasal voices and tendencies to quote obscure comic books and down 2-liter bottles of mountain dew on an hourly basis (think Big Bang Theory). Thus, I snickered to myself at the details that reminded of my tech school moments: the scenes of Eisenberg running through the snow in shorts and flip-flops (there was always that guy), writing equations on the window with a dry-erase marker when there was a lack of paper, and alcohol-induced bouts of programming rage (I think I even participated in a coding drinking game once). On a personal level, it was satisfying to see college portrayed at least remotely like I remembered it.

The The Social Network is an intricate and complex drama that tells the story of a couple of guys who watched as they changed the world and didn’t know what to do about it. At times, it strives too much to create tension, with characters that are defined by extreme personalities. When I first heard of this concept, I thought it was going to be social commentary on alienation and tensions of relationships due to dependence on technology. On the surface, The Social Network seems nothing like that: simply the story of the early beginnings of Facebook and their struggles. However, in detailing Zuckerberg and those who surrounded him, The Social Network is a story of characters with internal conflicts struggling to interact.

Thanks for reading...

Note: This was my first movie review. Ever. Comments are appreciated.
EDITED 10/10 1100: Grammar and formatting