The Social Network (Rated PG-13)

The Social Network is based on a book called The Accidental Billionaires, which tells the story of the early days of Facebook from the perspective of Eduardo Saverin, who was friends with Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard, and who put up the original $19,000 in seed money that kept Facebook going through the first six months or so of its existence. In exchange, Saverin had 30 percent of Facebook and was the original CFO of the company. Once Facebook really took off, Saverin was squeezed out. He responded by suing (the lawsuit was eventually settled for an unknown amount), and he obviously spent a lot of time complaining to the author of The Accidental Billionaires.

I've read The Accidental Billionaires, and it is about as good as you would expect from a not-particularly-talented writer whose best source is someone with a very jaundiced view of Zuckerberg. It's overwrought, some of the scenes in it are imaginary, and it can't help but have a lop-sided perspective. In short, it is not the sort of thing that one would automatically expect to turn into a great movie. But Aaron Sorkin (who wrote the screenplay for The Social Network and who should absolutely win an Academy Award for his efforts) took this very raw material and forged it into a masterpiece.

Sorkin has always been an absolute master of dialogue -- particularly dialogue for powerful Americans with ties to the Ivy League -- and he uses his talents in that regard to great effect here. Never have lawyers, computer geeks, and school administrators sounded so good. Every scene sparkles with zippy lines and snappy comebacks. From beginning to end, the audience is carried along on lines of dialogue so crisp and entertaining that you don't realize just how much work has been done to create a coherent structure for the movie.

And in my opinion, Sorkin's choice with regard to structure is even better than his dialogue. He learned a lot from years of crafting complex West Wing episodes. The underlying narrative is extremely difficult to organize. The heart of the story involves two different lawsuits against Facebook -- one by Saverin, the other by two ritzy WASPs who claim that Zuckerberg stole their idea for a social web page. The lawsuits never go to court, so there's no hope for closure there. Zuckerberg and Saverin don't make up, so you can't tell that story. Zuckerberg becomes friends with Sean Parker, the charismatic founder of Napster, but the Parker story does not fit easily with the other stories -- and that story, too, has a very ambiguous ending. Zuckerberg himself is portrayed as a very reserved person, who almost never lets on what he really thinks. Plus, Facebook never faces any sort of business crisis -- it is a hit from the word go, and never faces any real obstacles to its success.

Faced with these problems, it is almost impossible to see how you could get a good beginning, middle, and end out of this story. Sorkin's solutions are brilliant. He uses, as a framing device, two depositions -- one from each lawsuit. He creates a fictional character -- one of Zuckerberg's attorneys (played by Karen from The Office) -- to serve as his mouthpiece and to summarize the movie at its end. He creates another fictional character -- a girlfriend who dumped Zuckerberg, thus sparking his ambition -- to give the story a beginning and a finale. And he uses Parker (Zuckerberg's true kindred spirit) to put a lot of Zuckerberg's inner thoughts into words. Any of these devices could have been disastrous, but Sorkin uses his beautiful writing to hold together a fairly rickety structure, and the viewer never realizes how carefully he is being handled.

I've spent most of this discussion on Sorkin because I believe he deserves most of the credit. But a few other people in the movie deserve real praise. Jesse Eisenberg (who plays Zuckerberg) seems to have a relatively easy time of it as Zuckerberg is basically portrayed as a computer nerd. But in fact, of course, Zuckerberg is not a typical nerd -- he is a brilliant, driven genius who everyone consistently underestimates. Eisenberg does a great job of showing the audience why so many people treat Zuckerberg as just another geeky loser while also letting us see both the ambition and the talent that sets him apart from everyone else. Eisenberg also has to carry the movie -- he is in almost every scene, and the viewer has to care about his saga. This is a subtle but powerful performance that will not get as much credit as it should.

I would also like to give credit to whomever had the guts to sign off on the decision to have Justin Timberlake play Sean Parker. The movie makes Parker out to be someone who is both a business wizard and who is preternaturally cool, and Timberlake (who has pretty much personified cool throughout his life) is perfect in the role. Rooney Mara (as the fictional girlfriend) has only a very small amount of time onscreen to convince you that she is the sort of person who someone like Zuckerberg would obsess over for years, and she succeeds.

I have only two issues with the movie, both of which are minor. First, the WASP twins who sue Zuckerberg never really come to life; they are simply stereotypes (rich, blond, privileged, jocks) -- and old stereotypes at that. John Hughes understood that your handsome WASP bullies have to be either truly menacing (like James Spader in Pretty in Pink) or they must show some hidden vulnerability (like Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club). These kids are neither; they are simply young Thurston Howells plugged in to advance the story. But John Hughes also understood that no one really cared if the Assistant Principal in Ferris Bueller's Day Off was two-dimensional; and I don't think anyone will care much about these twins.

Second, Sorkin tries to explain Zuckerberg's motivation by indicating that he was, in some way, trying to impress the fictional ex-girlfriend. Within the context of the movie, this works very well -- it gives Sorkin a way to begin the movie (with the breakup) and a way to end it (as Zuckerberg seeks out his ex-girlfriend's page on Facebook). But we liberal arts types should never pretend that we can truly understand the motivations of great businessmen like Mark Zuckerberg. We come up with elaborate back-stories ("Rosebud," anyone?) to explain why businessmen act the way they do. But Frank Capra was closer to the truth; Mr. Potter doesn't seek to dominate Bedford Falls because he's angry at an ex-girlfriend, or because he's separated at his mother -- he does it because business is fun and he's great at it. Really great businessmen take joy and sustenance from their work in a way that the rest of us simply can't fathom. They love their companies in a way that most of us never love anything -- outside our own families. They hear music that we can't hear. And since we don't want to admit that, we prefer to make up our own stories. But again, this is a minor quibble. I wanted a modern Citizen Kane, not a realistic portrayal of the business mind.

On the whole, this is a great, great movie -- one of the best and most grown-up movies of recent years. I give it five stars out of five.