The Social Network

I think I enjoyed this film as much for the fact that I understood all of the tech speak as I did for the story. For instance the idea of hosting a race to gain root access to a UNIX server, and using it as a bench-mark in a job interview for a new programmer. Classic! Yet I also found I could so easily relate to Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) as the acerbic but highly motivated nerd.

Much of this lies in the fact that it’s not really about Facebook at all, but about the drama behind the venture – how the dynamics of friendship are fractured when big money enters the picture. The story hangs around the journey of Mark Zuckerberg (Eisenberg – who’s also astonishing/thrillingly dislikable by the way), a Harvard student who realizes his proto-Facebook ‘Facemash’, designed for students of his faculty, might also have appeal to the wider world.

Similarly, with Facebook founded as recently as 2004, the whole subject matter is still relatively juvenile, though the target audience will be far broader due to the widespread use of Facebook. And the underlying stories, the legal battles the changing dynamics of relationships and the change in the way business was conducted, lead to a tale much more dynamic than I had originally anticipated. But then that is where The Social Network’s charm springs from – taking what some might see as a dull subject and infusing it with heart.

This it does with superb performances highlighted in my mind by of one of my favourite actors in Justin Timberlake. For a singer who occasionally acts he shows a remarkable turn of style as the charming and unnervingly confident creator of Napster, Sean Parker. That said Sean Parker was actually only an early employee of Napster, but for the purposes of this film some artistic license can be granted.

And lastly there’s a script from Aaron Sorkin that’s very smart and well researched, and in dealing with the concerns of humans rather than computers, this story of betrayal, greed and moral conflict has themes that are timeless even if the subject matter isn’t.

Not only would I see this movie again, but I have bought the blu-ray for it. Definitely in my collection to be watched when the time is just right. And that might just be quite often – until the tech goes out of date, though I suspect that will be a number of years away yet.