Film review: The Social Network

Welcome to the age of the geek. A time when brains finally trump brawn. A time when the richest man on the planet is a bespectacled techie who made his billions through computer programming. Which makes The Social Network an appropriate parable for our times. The film charts the meteoric ascent of Mark Zuckerberg, the Harvard student whose dorm room website has made him the world’s youngest billionaire.

Dumped by his girlfriend for his absolute absence of social skills and arrogant pomposity, a drunken and bitter Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg of The Squid and the Whale) spends the night setting up a website on which fellow students can rank the attractiveness of their co-eds. Charming. But his petulant prank brings him to the attention of ambitious twin Olympic-rowing Harvard bluebloods, who task him with setting up an exclusive social network connecting fellow students online. As untroubled by intellectual property ethics as he is by sensitivity and modesty, Zuckerberg steals the idea and sets up a rival version. It would go on to be the global phenomenon Facebook.

This modern-day fairy tale juxtaposes the website’s path to global domination with two lawsuits that Zuckerberg was faced with, one launched by the irate twin rowers, and the other, more emotionally, from co-founder Eduardo (the adorable Andrew Garfield), Zuckerberg’s erstwhile best friend. Though involved from the beginning, financing the venture and providing the important programming code, Eduardo is royally screwed over when Mark falls under the spell of jumped up Napster founder Sean Parker (a wonderfully obnoxious turn by Justin Timberlake – who knew he could act?). Parker, Zuckerberg and their posse of super-geek programmers and underage dope-smoking local girls set up (and near destroy) house in California, from where the site goes corporate and global.

The big challenge was to make what could look fairly boring – nerds computer programming – exciting on film. To do that director David Fincher has played fast and loose with the truth, with raunchy frat parties, trendy clubs and plenty of sex and drugs interspersed between the techy stuff. Needless to say, many of those portrayed have complained about the version of events that Fincher presents.

Smart, snappy dialogue and superb performances from the leads, especially Eisenberg, whose gauche yet driven geek-boy is masterful, keep things fizzing along. But The Social Network is mainly compelling viewing not because it’s about one of the internet phenomena of our time, but for its human angle. The spurned outsider taking on the establishment, rejection, friendship, loyalty, ambition, revenge, betrayal – the subject matter may be 21st century but the themes are timeless. Whatever the ethics of putting a fictionalized version of a living 20-something on the big screen – and Fincher’s Zuckerberg does not come out of it well – this cracking Facebook film is one of the most entertaining, energetic and exciting of the year.