The “Facebook Movie” is, of course, not about Facebook at all. It’s the most Grecian of tragedies, with the most postmodern of codas. For insomuch that Zuckerberg is our Agamemnon, he isn’t undone by Hubris as much as belabored by Zeal. In fact, he isn’t undone at all. What’s essential to this dramatization, and what Fincher is perspicacious enough to left uneditorialized, is that Zuckerberg wins. The postscript lays it all out: Mark Zuckerberg is the world’s youngest billionaire. Maybe he lost 65 million dollars but, in the grand scheme of things (as poor, underused Rasheeda Jones points out) it’s just a “speeding ticket.”
The game has changed, ladies and gentlemen. It’s not about who comes out richer, but who finds what they are looking for in what is undoubtedly a spiritual sense. Why do you look so sad, Jesse Eisenberg, typing away like that in your hoodie as our movie comes to a close? Aren’t you rich? This is the postmodern element that makes this film so fascinating – this drive towards self-actualization, this general, unspecified malaise that Zuckerberg couldn’t get away from, no matter how many “friends” he accumulated or dollars they amounted to. Because all he really wanted, all he still wants, is dear sweet Erica from Boston University to accept his friend request. But she never, ever will.
It’s succinct, beautiful, perfectly within the film’s own vernacular: Mark “Refreshing” Facebook over and over and over until the credits sweep us away. This is Sorkin at his best. THE SOCIAL NETWORK is all about SPEED – the meteoric rise of this idea, the brutally quick way alliances are formed and broken, the actual server that allows uninterrupted browsing. The film constantly refreshes itself, moving the plot forward, updating the tally, driving us home. It moves so fast. It’s a rousing theatrical experience because it refuses to stop and reflect; we aren’t asked to side with Mark or with Eduardo or the Winklevosses or Justin freaken Timberlake. They’re all sort of assholes (or, in sweet Eduardo’s case, maybe just sort of limited).
All we’re ask to do is watch the user tally climb towards a million and gasp, occasionally, as the meaning of “friendship” is effectively hollowed from its core. Like CATFISH, THE SOCIAL NETWORK concerns itself with how the medium has changed and how this affects the messages sent. It’s when friendship becomes ‘Friendship,’ relationships are something that are denoted with a ‘Status,’ “poking” is some sort of meaningless flirtatious device (drained of sexuality, but unmistakably sexual). But the moral of both films (if there is one: CATFISH obsesses with its moral, to its detriment; THE SOCIAL NETWORK obstinately refuses to moralize, to its credit) is that these changes in language—in how words are used and what people say—actually erodes some sort of essential and human part of what it means to interact in society. “But he was your only friend!” someone (actually) audibly gasped in my rapt audience when Zuckerberg effectively fucked over Eduardo (a betrayal we all know is coming anyway). But the point is that while maybe he was he isn’t anymore—not because Mark has made more intimate connections, but rather because the meaning of friendship has changed. It is flimsier, easier to come by, able to be monetized. Being friends just doesn’t have the weight it used to. Unlike the grand mahogany of Fincher’s Harvard, with its 350 year old buildings and sturdy tradition, friendships are something built on a house of cards. This is as close to a buddy film as I’ve seen all year, and it does more to decry a genuine threat to FRIENDSHIP, in a person-to-person sense, in an intimate sense, than any film I can recall.
Coming from a role in a beautifully shot HOLY ROLLERS (shout out, Kutchins), Jesse Eisenberg is fantastic here, offering up a crucially different performance than we’ve seen from him yet. Though likely a reflection of the longer-than-usual shoot schedule that allowed for multiple takes (shout out, Zimet), not to mention Fincher’s general genius as a director of human actors, Eisenberg performance is marked by a sort of much needed nuance. He somehow plays Zuckerberg unJewish – Mark’s biggest fear is losing his sheen and having to go back to Caribbean Night at AEPi (which, we are clearly reminded, is the Jewish fraternity). In the old money stench of Harvard Square, this fear is sadly resonant. Eisenberg nails it. Justin Timberlake’s character is a bit more facilely written, but he is charming and slimy enough to pull it off. I think its fascinating that Timberlake, for all the paranoia the film assigns him, for his clear-cut delusions of grandeur, ends up BEING RIGHT. Facebook had unimaginable potential; they couldn’t even conceive just how valuable it was all going to become. His inchoate fears of persecution and invasion of privacy are the exact sentiments his actions, and the Facebook in general, are fostering in the world. A soldier of transparency who realizes he too can be seen – it’s a tragic case.
To be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to a film about a Harvard geek writing computer code and making a lot of money. I even resented the idea of it a bit – the implication that BECAUSE Zuckerberg struck it so rich we should all care. But I was wrong. This movie stands up to its hype. It isn’t about money but rather the sobering fact that money is besides the point for people who are a certain way. Zuckerberg will never be happy because he’ll always feel like an outcast. Even when he isn’t an outcast at all, even when he’s president of a Fortune 500 company, even when he can buy all the Final Clubs at Harvard. For who cares if you can nail the groupies and the Victoria Secret models when all you really want is that cute girl from B.U. who wears the funny hats? The nice one. The one who clicked ignore.
