Only Friends on Facebook

In 2009's Zombieland (Ruben Fleischer), Columbus, played by Jesse Eisenberg, remarks that "you want to know the best thing about [Zombieland]? No Facebook status updates. 'Rob Curtis is gearing up for Friday.' Who cares?"

It may seem funny that Eisenberg would go from complaining about Facebook in film to playing its co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg in film. It's safe to say that every Facebook user (or boycotter) has a fairly complicated relationship with the world's youngest billionaire. Not least Facebook's other co-founder Eduardo Saverin.

A recent E! Online article said that The Social Network, David Fincher's take on the history of the world's biggest social networking site, may be one way to rebel against the site's "iffy privacy policy or personalized ad bars...without having to delete your account."

The film, an adaptation of Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook; A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal, is the story of Mark Zuckerberg, a socially awkward Computer Science major from Harvard and his friend Eduardo Saverin, also socially awkward and a Business major. The two boys are united by their common goal of social acceptance and, well, getting laid.

Mark is obssessed with getting in to a prestigious and incredibly exclusice Final Club and Eduardo is on his way to being accepted by one, The Phoenix. After a disastrous date with his now-ex-girlfriend Erica, Mark, angry and upset, creates Facemash.com - a site where users are given two pictures side-by-side of girls on campus and asked to vote which one is more attractive. Not only does this understandably upset the female population of Harvard, it gets attention from the Administrative Board for breaches of privacy (Zuckerberg downloads photos from each dormitory's online Facebook, which is simply a profile of all students living in halls of residence), internet security (to download the photos, Mark hacks into secure servers), and no doubt improper use of Harvard's internet service. Not to mention the womens groups on campus and the offence it has caused them. Interestingly, the most damning piece of evidence comes from Mark himself - a true practitioner of problem-based enquiry, he blogs his process as he goes.

This event is the catalyst for everything that will follow. His stunt garners the attention of two seniors, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who approach him to write code for their social networking site, The Harvard Connection. He feigns mild interest and goes on to create something better using Saverin's business sense Phoenix connection - TheFacebook.com.

Now, if you're yawning by now or wondering why the founding of a website is worthy of book and film treatment, then you're exactly where I was a few months back when I first heard the news. A movie about Facebook? Starring Justin Timberlake? And Jesse Eisenberg? What the hell is he doing there? He's better than a movie about a website people use to keep their friends and acquaintances posted on their every move, including probably their bowel movements?

Now, as someone who is on Facebook a lot (it's currently open on my laptop in another window as I type these words), I didn't know the story of it's inception. All I knew was that it started out as a social networking website similar to MySpace or Friendster or Xanga or Bebo made exclusively for US college students. By the time I'd created a profile, history had already been made. It had spread from US colleges to the rest of the world.

When I saw the trailer and the film's tagline ("You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies."), I was hooked. Suddenly the story of some website was interesting. Had created rifts in friendships, kids suing each other, and music by Trent Reznor. And of course there was Jesse Eisenberg, who I've had a crush on since Adventureland.

The power of this story comes ultimately from watching the breakdown of a friendship, and watching two people discover they don't know each other as well as they thought. The tragedy isn't that Saverin got screwed over by his best friend, it's that Saverin and Zuckerberg aren't best friends any more.

While the story of the founding is Facebook is compelling, it might seem hard for other people to find it such an important story, especially people who don't use it. It is in this regard that the film bears resemblance to another film called Shattered Glass, released in 2003 and directed by Billy Ray.

Shattered Glass is the story of journalist Stephen Glass, whose meteoric rise as a journalist ends abruptly when many of his articles are exposed as fraudulent. This is a story that is instantly compelling for the people involved, journalists and media commentators. However, I read a review of the film's release on DVD that concluded the film's power came from the director's ability to tell a compelling story about an issue that isn't all that compelling for the wider public.

I can see that the same argument can be made about The Social Network - a business deal that sees a co-founder screwed out of a deal that, if you believe the story, he lost control over must happen all the time in Silicon Valley, Hollywood and even the independent film industry. It is Sorkin's script and director David Fincher's ability to bring the relationships among the major characters to the foreground that makes The Social Network such a strong film.

In the same E! Online article, scriptwriter Sorkin is quoted as saying that Facebook wanted no involvement in the film unless Zuckerberg was portrayed in a positive light, the clearcut hero. Because the filmmakers aimed for historical accuracy and Mezrich's book as its source material, that would never really be possible, not necessarily because of Zuckerberg's actions but because of his silence. As such, neither Zuckerberg nor Facebook has any involvement in the film.


While Mezrich has relied on court documents, interviews and media during the time, his narrative style leaves him open to criticism of the validity and credibility of his tale. Given that, after reading the book his impartiality is clear, with his prose regarding character motivation delicate. Much like the book, The Social Network remains largely speculative when it comes to Zuckerberg's character and motivation. However, this is precisely what makes him such a compelling character.

Director David Fincher is now a veteran of this kind of film. Whether it's a family trapped in their own home, or a man fighting his own sense of self-worth, Fincher is a master of the exploration of technology and its impact on the dynamics of human relationships. That his attention has turned to social networking now seems obvious. He excels once more, taking Mezrich's narrative structure and improving on it, using the 'kids suing each other' as the frame for his exploration. Enlisting Sorkin's assistance was also a master stroke, as Sorkin's experience is primarily in providing engaging analyses of what goes on behind the scenes of things the public is either not privy to or not interested in. The great feat of the two men is that while the narrative might reflect a clear hero and villain, the characterisation and unfolding of the story means that by the end we are questioning that very idea.

However if anyone can be said to be the hero of the film, it is Saverin, which is because Saverin, the main consultant to Mezrich during the writing of the book, has had the most involvement with the project. His side of the story is more accessible, much like the Winklevosses (or Winklevi, as Zuckerberg calls them in the film).

Despite the material appearing to favour Saverin as the victim, the film goes some way to humanising Zuckerberg and revealing him as a complicated, flawed human being (aren't we all?). It also leaves the viewer with so many questions; did Mark intentionally remove Eduardo from the deal or was he brainwashed into doing it by Sean Parker? Is he truly an arsehole or just incredibly socially awkward? Did he invent Facebook just to have friends? Did he really steal the Winklevosses idea and prevent them from competing with him or was he unable to get up the courage to tell them he didn't want to work on their project after all?

Playing real people can be difficult, which is not to say it isn't more difficult than playing a fictional character. It's difficult first of all because the person is alive and capable of criticising your performance and second of all because you have to choose whether or not to absolutely immerse yourself in becoming that exact person or bringing to the screen your own experiences and using that to identify with the character and become that character. Eisenberg's performance is understated and as a result it is brilliant. To play a real life person who remains elusive in the media and criticised by the people who would appear to know him best must have been a challenge but like many actors before him who take on the challenge of playing a real life character villified in public, Eisenberg is able to reveal another side to Zuckerberg; not just faithful to the picture painted by Mezrich but so much more. The final scene, as he continually refreshing the facebook page as he patiently waits to be added as a friend by his ex-girlfriend is touching and may as well have the title 'Oscar Clip' flashing at the bottom of the screen.

Newcomer Andrew Garfield also puts in an incredible performance as Saverin. He is playing the hero, for all intents and purposes. He perfectly captures Saverin's shyness and vulnerability, and makes his journey from Zuckerberg's friend to foe engaging. It's very easy for us to side with Saverin; he's attractive, extends a hand of friendship to someone in a similar position to him and to watch him being bitten by the hand he has fed (both socially and financially) is gut-wrenching. Not only that, the shifting dynamics between the two actors make it obvious that both actors have worked hard at establishing the complicated relationship between the two men. It's easy to see why he's slated to play Spider-Man in the re-energising (reboot is such a stupid term to me when applied to cinema) of the franchise. He's got the vulnerable hero role nailed down. Have I already mentioned how attractive he is?

The rest of the cast is also strong, and yes, that includes Justin Timberlake as Napster founder and dubious mentor Sean Parker. Sean Parker sees himself as a rockstar, a role Timberlake is no stranger to. Don't be fooled, Timberlake's comic turns with The Lonely Island gang and Saturday Night Live hosting duties have in some ways allowed him to become something of a, dare I say it, character actor. He may just be another successful popstar-turned-actor. Rooney Mara is also strong as Zuckerberg's ex-girlfriend Erica. It's a small role but Erica becomes the driving force for a lot of Zuckerberg's actions and if she was an unsypathetic character, or simply a lost love interest, it might be harder to understand why Mark would want to repair his relationship with her. Possibly the best of the supporting cast is Armie Hammer, who plays both Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and had me fooled - I thought the role was played by real-life twins.

The work by Trent Reznor cannot be discounted and is a superb contribution to the film's compelling story. His dark electronic score provides an ominous edge to the computer-based action sequences. Most people won't understand the power of writing computer code and algorithms, but his score allows us to feel the impact of these codes and logarithms, and allows us to feel more fully the consequences they bring.

Mark Zuckerberg, 2010's Time Magazine Person of the Year might denounce the film as fiction, but that's not the insult he might think, because The Social Network is the best kind of fiction.

I first saw the film in New Jersey in October, and a week or so before it's official Australian release one of my Facebook friends had the following status update:

"just saw the social network and now I love facebook even more :) great movie!"