Weekly Review -- Making friends, are we?

The Social Network (2010) -- How many friends do you have?

The question which would have been simple to answer during the early days of my generation has now become a cryptic quasi-merit query, borne of the digital age and Facebook, the ultimate contact grid. Five hundred million of us have signed up for membership; most of us have done so in order to keep in touch with pals and colleagues, as well as waste time on quizzes and personality tests when experiencing writer's block or when feeling uninspired to go to sleep. Some of us also have at least fifty or more 'friends' on the site, averaging a dozen that we have not actually met.

So, who is the enigmatic brain behind the operation? Who is Mark Zuckerberg, the programmer whose work has led to a revolution in human interaction, but whose career has also been subject to controversy, speculation and more than one lawsuit? We can only get lost in guesswork, while being certain of one thing alone -- this man and his creation leave plenty of room for ardent debate.

Films based on real life stories are usually made in one of two ways: either sharply deviating from the facts for the sake of sheer sensationalism or peppering the truth with sporadic grains of salt. Director David Fincher does neither with The Social Network, choosing to delve into the background of the people and relationships that were at the forefront, as well as on the fringe, of the invention of Facebook. Seeing the film as a display of pure facts could prove to be a highly dubious endeavor, as is the case with most biographies; seeing it as a superbly entertaining piece on loyalty, success and duplicity is the best way to experience it fully.

After a harsh break-up, Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) creates a sexist site that compares the school's female students' physical virtues, jamming traffic to Harvard's main server in the process. When he gets suspended, he is contacted by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer) and their business partner Divya Narendra (Max Minghella) to become programmer for a networking site that the brothers are creating. Instead, Zuckerberg pitches their idea as his own to his best friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), who decides to invest in the venture. The twins learn about this turn of events and decide to sue Zuckerberg, opening a Pandora's box of disintegrating friendships and fraying egos...

Fincher steers the action unflinchingly and precisely, putting the audience in the position of observer, but never encouraging us to cheer; if anything, this story is one of the first 21st century socio-cultural sagas, a bloodless dystopia inhabited by detached anti-heroes. Jesse Eisenberg, who had already shown a spark of major promise in indies like The Hunting Party and Adventureland, is a revelation as Zuckerberg. His performance teeters on the brink of awkward madness, treading the line between painfully misunderstood and inconceivably arrogant. The viewer is unsure whether to sympathize with Zuckerberg's social ineptness or be angered by his callous deeds, simply because we can never relate to this person and are not meant to; the concept of humane behavior and compassion is as foreign to him as the domain of bytes is familiar. Garfield's gently understated Saverin provides a nice contrast to the mania that is Zuckerberg, while Justin Timberlake is a pleasant surprise as the ambivalently cocky Sean Parker, founder of Napster. Finally, Armie Hammer paints a unique characterization of no less than two people, finding each of the brothers' distinct voices as the film progresses.

As sharp as the acting and directing is, the screenplay is what makes the story and characters crackle and pop. It takes incredible talent, experience and comprehension of the human condition to bring to life a tale where, in reality, not much happens. Let me clarify. The basic, bare-bones structure of the film deals with people talking a lot, arguing a lot, throwing snide glances at one another and periodically throwing things in disillusioned anger. Frankly speaking, the entire affair could have been a pretentious mess, had it not been for screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. It is his brisk dialogue that makes the proceedings fascinating and that sculpts the characters into crazy, passionate, obstinate, perplexed and fallible individuals, those captivating creations that we are unable to take our eyes off. It is Sorkin's masterful writing that injects the social into The Social Network.

Even though we are capable of drawing our own conclusions on the suit, based on legal evidence and corroborated statements, we will never know the facts. Regardless of the truth, The Social Network is a stark portrait of a genius whose intelligence is more of a curse than a blessing, whose loneliness overrides any and all brilliance that he can conjure and whose moral ambiguity places him in conflict with his peers, if he has any to begin with. The film is an antidote to a conventional cinematic account of a real life incident, representing a provocative portrait of a figure that is nothing short of polarizing.

10/10