The Social Network
Genre: Drama
Director: David Fincher
Stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake
*****
With so many interactions now reduced to status updates on Facebook, it may seem as though we have this messy human-to-human thing all figured out.
Except we don’t. People in the 21st century are every bit as crude, brutal and self-serving as when cavemen were knocking each other over the head with clubs. This is the eternal verity that director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin pursue so well and with such delicious irony in The Social Network, a drama about the creation of Facebook that’s a deservedly strong candidate for Best Picture and other honours at the next Academy Awards.
Jesse Eisenberg stars as Mark Zuckerberg, the geeky Harvard student who in 2004 started Facebook in his dorm room, launching a social media revolution that eventually made him America’s youngest billionaire.
Here’s a man who, as the story goes, gained 500 million Facebook “friends,” but sold out the one true pal who believed in him and supported him. Zuckerberg may be the epitome of modern falseness: an artificial friend for a virtual world.
A wealth of extras include commentaries by Fincher, Sorkin and the cast, plus several featurettes.
