The Social Network

The Social Network is the 2010 film about the creation of the hugely popular site Facebook; which now has around 500 million users worldwide.

The film introduces us to Facebook founder Mark Zukerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) as a self-involved, nerdy computer science major at Harvard. Zukerberg is a guy who sits in his dorm room and drunkenly rants to his LiveJournal about how horrible his ex-girlfriend (Rooney Mara-who has landed the Lisbeth role in Dragon Tattoo). Wanting to take his mind of being dumped, Zukerberg sets out creating 'Facemash', a site that allows Harvard students to vote on who they think is the hotter girl, by comparing two photos after hacking into the college websites, with the help of best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield).

When Facemash crashes the Harvard database, rowing champions Carmen & Tyler Winklevoss (Arnie Hammer) and their friend Divya Narenda (Max Minghella) select him as a talented programmer who could help them create Harvard Connection, a website that would allow people to view profiles of only people that went to Harvard. Zukerberg accepts the job, but heads home and creates his own version-The Facebook-with money from Saverin.

When The Facebook goes live the Winklevoss twins and Narenda are not at all pleased, but are unable to get in touch with Zukerberg. The Facebook takes off pretty swiftly, soon expanding to include other top universities including Yale, Columbia and Stanford. When it reaches Stanford, it attracts the attention of Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the founder of Napster, who instantly wants to get in on the success of the site. He effectively sweeps Zukerberg off his feet with his flashy lifestyle-despite crashing out both of his previous online ventures-and makes 'his biggest contribution to the company' turning The Facebook into simply Facebook.

Parker convinces Zukerberg to move to Los Angeles, where he lives it up in a house with a pool (funded by Eduardo), and is virtually seduced by the idea of billions of dollars that could be made. Although he had ignored Eduardo's previous attempts to gain advertising revenue (ironic, considering Facebook is covered in them), Zukerberg accepts Parker's idea of going to people like hedge fund managers to gain investments.

Pretty swiftly, everything turns sour. Saverin is cut out of the company (his share drops to something like 0.3%), despite his investments and personal relationship with Zukerberg. Plus, when the Winklevoss brothers discover that Facebook has expanded to England (specifically at that time to Oxford, Cambridge & LSE) they finally snap. Both then file lawsuits against Zukerberg.

On paper, this doesn't sound like enough to fill out a full film, or indeed if it did, it would not be very interesting. However, in the hands of Aaron Sorkin (writer of The West Wing) and David Fincher (director of Fight Club and the upcoming American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) it is transformed into a very quick, snappy film that makes even things like hacking into networks exciting, with the help of some very good sound design. It flicks between the story of the founding of Facebook, and the

The performances also give the very electornic story a human side. Einsberg is brilliant as Zukerberg, a man who I pretty much hated throughout the film. He is a character who is incredibly self-involved, and who seems motivated by his rejection by his girlfriend and by the secret clubs at Harvard, that Eduardo managed to get into. However, in the final scenes of the movie, Einsberg gives Zukerberg a human edge as it is revealed that although he is worth a huge amount of money, he still doesn't have the girl he wants.

Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin is also wonderful; Saverin seems totally supportive of his best friend, despite being told things by him like his admission to the secret clubs being based on the fact that he is Jewish and making up the diversity numbers. Although it could be argued that Saverin was incredibly jealous of Sean Parker's influence on Zukerberg, it is understandable, Saverin is the guy who comes up with the first mathematical code for Facemash and it would have been horrible to see his best friend and the company he has worked on fall away from him.

Justin Timberlake was a huge suprise to me as Parker, he gives a fine performance as a guy who I disliked even more than Zukerberg. Other great performances came from Arnie Hammer playing both the Winklevoss twins, who attempt to go through all the bases before they think about sueing Zukeberg and Max Minghella (son of the late Anthony) as their slightly more militant friend. Some humour came from Brenda Song as Christy, Eduardo's slightly mental girlfriend.

I really enjoyed The Social Network, and I hope it does do really well when it comes to awards season as the performances and writing were all brilliant.