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BY JOE TYRRELL
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
MOVIE REVIEW
"The Social Network" texts this message to Mark Zuckerberg: $100M not enuf.
Despite the Facebook founder's dramatic philanthropy to Newark schools, Jesse Eisenberg's blank-faced, inflection-free portrayal has already created an iconic image more dramatic than the original.
Finally arriving in New Jersey theaters after surfing a wave of publicity in all other media outlets, this account of the creation of Facebook presents brilliant fictions with as much conviction as any prosaic facts.
Drawing heavily on Ben Mezrich's fast-paced book "The Accidental Billionaires," Aaron Sorkin's script decides immediately what the story is, and sticks to it. In the 21st Century, Horatio Alger is an envious but brilliant outsider who takes what he needs and discards the rest, especially friends and business partners.
Sinking the auteur theory, director David Fincher is ever only as good as the script. Buoyed here by Mezrich and Sorkin, he keeps this story swimming like a shark, charting a tale of socially inept Harvard students doing what they do best — going on line — and then turning that into a map of a new world.RELATED:
‘The Social Network' is a rousing success (with MOVIE TRAILER)
"The Social Network" has about as much interest in actual on-line networking as its protagonist does in other people's conversations. Like a certain Maltese falcon, Facebook is a device used to launch both a high-powered business saga and an inquiry into the state of Mark Zuckerberg.
Sorkin shows his entire hand in a quiet but riveting first scene. In a restaurant, the movie Zuckerberg is talking to a girlfriend, Erica. Although there's plenty of snappy dialogue, conversation is too grand a word. The references fly fast and furiously, but most of Mark's are self-referential.
He is obsessing about getting into one of Harvard's exclusive "final clubs," off campus houses where the elites meet, eat and party. Erica, the excellent Rooney Mara, has a quicksilver intelligence, but her expression turns increasingly leaden as Mark offers one unintentional insult after another.
Finally, she's had enough, and tells him, "Listen. You're going to be successful and rich. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a tech geek. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole."
Message delivered. Mark runs back to his dorm room, posts an insulting blog about Erica, then begins hacking the websites of all the dorms, pulling off photos of female students and mashing them into a new site that enables visitors to rate who is hotter. Traffic ensues.
Dropping the book, "The Social Network" is at its best focusing on faces: the slight flicker at the corner of Eisenberg's lips; the excitement and dread that light Andrew Garfield's dark features; the fireworks behind Justin Timberlake's eyes.
Mara has only one more scene, and she is missed, but those three male actors alone are enough to carry the movie. Restricting himself to a narrow range, Eisenberg displays remarkable nuance and control. His Zuckerberg is acutely aware of his status and determined to improve it, but only insofar as he can control the process. He realizes just a beat too late when his efforts are failing.
Somewhat suave, Garfield's Eduardo Saverin tolerates Zuckerberg's real-world ineptitude because he understands the striving behind it, and admires his pal's unworldly mastery of computer codes. As the friend with money, Eduardo is the one who starts working to turn Facebook into something more than a drunken prank.
Timberlake arrives later as Napster founder Sean Parker, whose bad-boy charm and business panache makes Eduardo seem like yesterday's leftovers to Mark. Never mind that Parker has already crashed and burned in two Internet high-wire acts, he knows what to order from the menu and which venture capitalists to hit up for cash.
There is one more noteworthy performance. Arnie Hammer plays twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. They are the key to subsequent events, as they and their partner Divya Narendra (Max Minghella) approach Zuckerberg for help setting up a planned website site.
Hammer is very good, especially in a sly scene where they have an unsatisfactory encounter with Harvard's then president Larry Summers, played by Douglas Urbanksi as an older type of Zuckerberg. But since the movie goes to great lengths to differentiate the two brothers, the casting seems like a stunt.
All this material is in Mezrich's book, which has been criticized for the writer's approach of mashing together varied documents, conflicting recollections of events and "recreated" dialogue into a cinematic narrative, and for being anti-Zuckerberg.
(In a characteristic move known to followers of Facebook privacy policies — holster gun, pull trigger, shoot foot — Zuckerberg declined to cooperate with Mezrich or the moviemakers.)
Aside from that opening scene, Sorkin's strongest contribution is shaping the story through a series of depositions after Zuckerberg has fallen out with all of his former friends and business partners.
Of course, that means omitting certain inconvenient facts, like Zuckerberg's real-life girlfriend Priscilla Chan, who does get a mention in Mezrich's book. A Zuckerberg capable of intimate human connection does not fit the single-minded narrative Sorkin and Fincher want to present.
Chan also might upset the movie's own obsessive/disdainful view of most of the other female characters, and the Asian-American ones in particular. "They're prizes" — instead of, say, people — Sorkin told Stephen Colbert of the portrayal of Harvard women.
Even Zuckerberg interviewer and defender Jose Antonio Vargas acknowledges the billionaire "can be distant and disorienting." In a New York profile, Vargas wrote, "The typical complaint about Zuckerberg is that he's 'a robot.' One of his cloest friends told me, 'He's been overprogrammed.'"
And yet, Zuckerberg is also the man giving $100 million to Newark schools. Perhaps he has been glammed by Cory Booker and Chris Christie in the same way he was dazzled by Sean Parker, but that amount is more than the minimum needed to be considered a philanthropist.
Zuckerberg is also 26, which suggests that his full story has yet to be written, even if he carries Jesse Eisenberg around for decades to come.
Joe Tyrrell may be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
