72/100
Fourth viewing, last seen when it was still in theaters. I didn't review it at the time, apart from a couple of tweets, but suddenly remembered, as I was watching, that I wrote a Scenic Routes piece, years later, about the Facemash sequence, which was not just this particular film's zenith but far and away my favorite scene of 2010. (Interestingly, I have no memory at all of "Face mask, Somewhere," which was tied for my distant second.) Feel free to read or reread it, if you like—having already analyzed Fincher's formal prowess at length, I won't be adding much on that score below—but what triggered my memory of having previously written about Social Network was once again being absolutely gut-punched by this shot:
The still doesn't do it justice, I'm afraid. One of the most piercing moments in cinema for me, capable of choking me up in seven seconds flat; I just rewatched it to count the seconds and kid you not now have another lump in my throat. This is one of only three times that we see Erica Albright in the movie (not counting pictures on her Facebook page in the final scene), yet the movie succeeds to the degree that it's about Erica—or, rather, about Zuckerberg creating a billion-dollar company as an act of pathetic violence against Erica. Which probably didn't in fact happen, as he was by all accounts already dating his future wife in 2003, but who cares? Nor does it ultimately bother me much that Sorkin's fantastic rat-a-tat opening scene makes it impossible to believe that this woman would ever for a second have been romantically interested in such a self-righteous hostile condescending dweeb. (I guess we're supposed to think that those qualities somehow hadn't emerged until now.) Creativity as revenge is a subject too rarely explored and dear to my heart; as I noted in tweet form, my unproduced magnum opus, The Ruse, is an avant-garde exploration of same, the idea being that you're watching a fairly straightforward kidnapping narrative but gradually start to realize, from weird shit happening in the background and stray lines of dialogue that make no sense in context, that this screenplay has been written to attack some unknown individual. It's my firm belief that such ignoble motivations underlie much of humanity's greatest accomplishments, and it's funny and poignant to see Zuckerberg ask Parker whether he still thinks about the woman he was trying to impress with Napster, and getting a perplexed, incredulous "No!" in response.
Thing is, while that thread gets tugged every so often, always to good effect, it's a small percentage of The Social Network's two hours. The film's also about how Zuckerberg screwed Eduardo Saverin, his only real friend, plus stolen the Winklevoss twins' basic idea for a Harvard-specific social network (if not any of their code; still ultra-sleazy behavior), and Sorkin's structured it, rather brilliantly, as a series of flashbacks (which we don't immediately recognize as such, not yet having seen the movie's present day) prompted by depositions for multiple lawsuits. Fincher and Sorkin and the cast make this corporate skulduggery as entertaining as it arguably could be, and I never get tired of watching Eisenberg (who made my list of that decade's ten best performances*) treat everyone he encounters with snide contempt—I laugh every time when he interrupts questioning to double-check an attorney's math, scribbling on a legal pad, after she asks Saverin whether the $18,000 he added to his initial $1,000 seed brought his total Facebook investment to $19,000. (No doubt Sorkin invented that, but, again, who cares when it's legendarily petty/pissy?) Ultimately, though, I don't really care whether Saverin—who wound up renouncing his U.S. citizenship to avoiding paying taxes, but pretend I don't know that, even—received oh let's ignorantly speculate $20 billion rather than the $75 billion that he should have. There's a fundamental shallowness to the film that Fictionalized Zuck's fixation on Erica doesn't go deep enough to alleviate. And that shallowness gets compressed into a final line that I truly despise, almost enough to outweigh the dozens of terrific lines that preceded it: "You're not an asshole, Mark. You're just trying so hard to be." Thankfully, that's not the actual end, as we close on Zuckerberg obsessively refreshing Erica's feed while Lennon asks him how it feels to be one of the beautiful people—total bullshit, perhaps, but incisive bullshit. Sorkin could have pushed further in that direction, but would he then be Sorkin?
What it kinda boils down to is that Saverin's discovery of Zuckerberg's treachery serves as The Social Network's dramatic climax, and not only am I only marginally invested in their superficial friendship, and totally indifferent to whether Saverin will one day be the 8th-richest person on the planet or the 68th-richest, but I didn't until researching it afterward even fully understand the nature of the screwing. Think I've got it now: shares being diluted means that when more shares are created, you maintain the raw number that you owned but not the percentage. So if you'd owned 35,000 shares, and that had originally been 35% of the company, you still own 35,000 shares...out of what's now a million, so only 3.5% of the company. Right? Regardless, it's financially arcane enough to have trouble really hitting hard as a movie's big OMG moment. So I remain at a bit of a distance.
Man does this not need a sequel. Especially one starring Jeremy Strong, who I cannot imagine as either the real Zuckerberg or Sorkin's version.
* Here's the ballot I submitted to the Skandies decade poll (10 names required, maximum 30 points, minimum 5)
Peyman Moaadi, A Separation (24)Barry Keoghan, The Killing of a Sacred Deer (21)Sonia Braga, Aquarius (11)Ellen Barkin, Shit Year (11)Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out (7)Ann Dowd, Compliance (6)Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network (5)Jason Bateman, The Gift (5)Regina Williams, Life and Nothing More (5)Rachel McAdams, Game Night (5)