something is happening here but you don’t know what it is—do you, messrs. winklevii?
there aren’t enough words to describe the social network within the 300-or-so here, but director david fincher’s film is about words exactly – the power of the rapidfire-shot voiced ones; the silent incisions made by the pixel-formed digital ones; and the bitter sting of the litigative ones unleashed between friends. that’s because it’s a rare film that can count its screenwriter on equal footing with its director or stars – think dustin lance black, who penned milk; or william monahan, responsible for every f-bomb in the departed.
aaron sorkin’s script deserves all its praise. it’s the centerpiece of this fantastic film: an uncommonly penetrating look at what it takes, means, and costs to be cool through the lens of our machiavellian anti-hero, facebook founder mark zuckerberg [jesse eisenberg]. the story is as simple – and as timeless – as that.
defying all rules-of-thumb that say a page of script usually equals a minute of finished footage, fincher manages to compress all 160 pages of sorkin’s glorious, insightful wordplay into 120. fincher hasn’t been this economical in his craft in a long while (and i refer here to his gripping, but kinda bloated zodiac). the film’s frenetic editing weaves the narrative through time and space with dexterity, allowing compelling drama to emerge from courtroom sparring or nerds hacking – things that’d otherwise bore – by trusting in audiences to intuit those voids.
hyperkinetic and knowingly contemporary, the social network is nevertheless concerned with universally american struggles: one-upmanship, betrayal, winning, and suing folks. it’ll make you believe in an appletini-wielding justin timberlake declaring ‘this is our time!’ on the one hand, then land with the terrible force of an enduring shakespearean tragedy on the other.
the social network opens everywhere thursday [nov. 11]. it should be seen and Liked – quick, before this review falls into your attentive deficit.
