The Social Network

You cannot see Mark Zuckerberg’s eyes. They are black and beady and surrounded by shadow.

This is what I focused on for the better part of two hours.

If David Fincher cast Jesse Eisenberg specifically for his brow bones, it would have been a genius move. His brows are always together. His lips are always pursed… or rather the bottom one is pursed and the top one pouts. This inbetweeness (an indecision of lips) is appropriate as Zuckerberg is always somewhere half way between emotions. He never fully displays any one. Showing emotion means showing your hand. Showing your hand makes you vulnerable, and Mark Zuckerberg hates vulnerability most of all. He is like a combination of Vito Corleone and J.J. Hunsecker. Powerful, dangerous, brilliant and lonely. Throw in a dash of icy Howard Roark arrogance and you’ve got yourself a movie.

The Social Network is the story of how that site you use every single day was conceived by a kid so young, you feel like a failure no matter what age you are. Yes. Mark Zuckerberg was most likely an asshole with an emasculated programmer’s deep hostility* towards women and Zach Morris look alikes, but, he understood the power of one of our most primal needs. The desire to connect and belong… and then he made a billion dollars off of it.

The film is extremely well made. Because extremely well made new movies renew my faith in film, adrenaline is leaking out of my ears.

Nothing about the film was superfluous. There was no extra air.

The editing is tight as hell, and the photography by DP Jeff Cronenweth (who also worked with Fincher on Fight Club) is great. Not spectacular or fancy, but noticeably thoughtful. Most of the conversation shots of the characters have a very shallow depth of field: perhaps another little way of communicating their isolation from the rest of the world.  Additionally, I am personally pleased that most of the shots are truly static. No gently hovering camera here (a style that’s become way overused in the past ten years or so).

There are also a few unusual sequences which are unexpected in an otherwise straight forward narrative. I particularly enjoyed one that played with sound. In the scene Zuckerberg and Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) excitedly discuss their ideas for the future of Facebook. The conversation takes place at a huge Palo Alto nightclub over extremely loud drum & bass. The music is much louder than in a usual club scene, but you don’t realize that until the end. You strain to hear the conversation just as you would in a real club. This increases your attention and you only realize when it cuts to the next scene, that you’re leaning forward in your seat.

But all this would be diddly squat without Jesse Eisenberg. The man with the brows who knocked it out of the park. Eisenberg does an excellent job in communicating Zuckerberg’s sad, isolated existence. He is a lonely man, always on the defense. He brings to mind a weary soldier in the midst of a years long battle. A person whose body has adapted to a perpetual expectation of attack: The moody protuberance of his eyebrow ridge and taught facial expressions, his terse and rapid speech, the rigidity with which he holds his body (in particular his shoulders), and his robotic movements. He is ready to fire at a moment’s notice. You won’t see it coming though. He’ll use a silencer.

*Computer nerds have been wrongly portrayed in films as gentle underdogs. Popular kids must have made all these movies, since anyone else can tell you programming nerds can be some of the meanest sons of bitches this side of the lunch room.

*Edit: I did think of one thing that’s superfluous. Go see the movie and tell me if you know what it is.