The Social Network

The Social Network is the film that follows Mark Zuckerberg's rise from Harvard nerd to the youngest billionaire in the world. The story itself is rather interesting. Mark, after a long night of drinking following a breakup creates a website. A rather simple website even, you just go to the site and are given the photos of two girls, and the user simply clicks on the one he/she thinks is prettier.

This site, FaceSmash, doesn't sound particularly impressive at first glance. But, to create this site, Mark had to hack the student directory of almost every dormitory house, and the site brought in over 22,000 hits in a matter of hours and caused the school's network to shut down. After that, some fellows from one of the more prestigious houses try to get him to program a site called Harvard Connection. Mark stole their idea and expanded it to a far broader base, while maintaining the exclusivity that Harvard Connection was trying to provide. After borrowing some money from a friend, his career takes off. He tramples anyone and everyone that stands in his way, and eventually ends up in court hearings being sued by several of those people.

Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg. Jesse Eisenberg has all the charm of Michael Cera, but the ability to play much deeper and more complex characters. Mark is almost an anti-hero. He cheated the creators of Harvard Connection of their idea, he cheated his best friend out of his share of the business, he was a jackass to his girlfriend. When confronted and dragged to court, he was never attentive in these meetings. He worked on his site, he daydreamed. He viewed the events around him with a mildly curious detachment.

You can never really root for him as he faces his obstacles. They were so clearly of his own making, and he just as clearly felt little remorse for them. But at the same time, while he was arrogant, there wasn't a great deal of gloating over his adversaries. He just did what he felt was best for the creation of his company, regardless of who got mowed down along the way.

At the same time, however, you never feel a terrible amount of sympathy for those he trampled over. The three jilted creators behind Harvard Connection all came from substantial money. Two of them (brothers) even rowed for the United States in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. His best friend and initial business partner also had money, and all four of them had perfectly lucrative futures ahead of them.

Even Mark Zuckerberg was never in any real sense of peril. If, at any time, Facebook had failed, he had more than enough skill with computers to get hired on at any major IT company. It made the story, strangely enough, more interesting. In most of these other "real-life" stories surrounding the creation of great things, there's almost a sense of melodrama in how the characters overcame obstacles and gave everything they had for the small chance of success.

Jesse Eisenberg's performance was not the only noteworthy performance. Justin Timberlake's portrayal of the erratic and charismatic Sean Parker, founder of Napster, was masterful. Timberlake completely inhabited his character, creating a man similar in many ways to a natural disaster. He sweeps in and, despite the fact that he is clearly an emotionally unbalanced man, spending too much time trading on his success to throw wild parties with cocaine and young floozies. Despite the fact that he is incredibly unbalanced, there was some kind fire behind him that made him valuable to Mark in making Facebook the vast success it is today.

The movie was incredibly well done, and definitely worth seeing, even if you aren't big on Facebook. The story surrounds a peculiarly complex young man as fortune, quite nearly, falls directly into his lap.