I finally got to watch The Social Network, one of the most buzzed out movies of last year. After watching it I have to say that the buzz was deserved. The film tells the made-up and embellished story of how Facebook was created. By now everyone who followed the buzz around the movie should now that it’s based on the book The Accidental Billionaires. So prior to watching the movie I was primed that I was about to see a work of fiction.
But that didn’t really matter. The story starts with the Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg. His character is introduced with a break up. He’s like The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon, but less funny, and a bit more empathic. He is aware of his asshole-ness. We see how Zuckerberg creates havoc hacking into servers, stealing photos, and making Facemash. In the pantheon of geek movies, I suppose you could call this one that, but only because of the Zuckerberg character. One movie I keep seeing parallels to, a made for tv movie, is Pirates of Sillicon Valley. There’s name dropping of Apache servers running Linux, code-a-thon’s, and Zuckerberg’s Livejournal postings. It hit’s the geek zeitgeist in some aspects. But this movie is more like A Few Good Men with is stream of heavy dialog. Grandiose and sometimes ridiculous dialog.
Like the Sean Parker character, excellently played by Justin Timberlake, and his hyper awareness of knowing how he would disrupt the music industry. The character is cartoony, but it’s entertaining listening to him talk.
In the end this movie is about the obsession of making something that will never be finished and the consequences of that. That’s what I find interesting about Mark Zuckerberg, the movie one and the real life one. They both are obsessed about huge ideas and that is a great formula for a great story.
