The Social Network

This film was written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher.  The story revolves around how Mark Zuckerber, a 20 year old student at Harvard founded the social network site Facebook.  The story is compelling because as you are watching the film, you have to make decisions about which characters motives you choose to believe.  What was the true reason behind creating a social network site?  Was it to become popular?  Was there a need to get back at or defame the character of organizations that didn’t let you in?  Was it simply to allow lonely Harvard educated males to meet girls?  All of those questions can and are used as arguments for the site’s creation and that perhaps is why watching the film is so rewarding.  The fact that the purpose of the film is to stress the complexity that exists with using technology as a tool to create human connection is a fantastic use of filmmaking.

The film stars Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook.  I absolutely believe the performance he gives in this film is not only Oscar worthy but also a sympathetic portrayal of a man with a very good idea.  I felt for the character of Mark Zuckerberg because of how he struggled to make such an ingenious idea that allows us to connect more efficiently and connect to the world.  I think that out of everyone in the cast Justin Timberlake gave the weakest performance. Justin’s character of Sean Parker felt overly cocky and had no real emotional ties to any of the main characters.  Simply put he was out to make money for himself which while true to life was kind of disheartening.  I really believe that some of the story was lost by focusing on this specific character.  I love the speed at which the dialogue is delivered by Jesse Eisenberg because it’s complicated speech yet extremely matter of fact.  I love how Eisenberg channels Zuckerberg’s emotions within the moment and how distinct and certainly bottled his emotions were.  For all his human errors Mark Zuckerberg can at least be called a misunderstood nerd with a good idea and I think the audience will enjoy watching his journey even though they probably would never friend him.