The Social Network

When I first saw the trailer for The Social Network, I knew that this was a movie that I'd end up going to see. I didn't come to this conclusion because I thought that this would be a good movie, I came to this conclusion because this movie is, in a very real way, the story about me. Ok. I'm not Mark Zuckerberg, but the story of Social Networking is literally a story that I participated in and continue to participate in through my work... needless to say, even before walking into the movie theater to see the film, I knew that I would have strong opinions about the subject matter and how it was portrayed.



The Social Network is set during a time when Facebook was beset by two distinct law suits; one involving Zuckerberg's best friend, and another filed by a trio of Harvard undergrads who claimed that they came up with the original idea. David Fincher (who also directed Zodiac) does a fantastic job of capturing the essence of what happened while dramatizing it enough to make the whole thing interesting. Like in Zodiac, Fincher spared no effort in getting everything set correctly all the way down to the cups of coffee being from the local coffee shops.. having worked in Palo Alto at about the same time as Facebook's rise to the top... I bought coffee and ate lunch at the same places!

The flow of this movie reminded me a lot of the film W. In many ways, it explains the how and the what... with some stretching of the truth in order to get at the why. Ultimately, I feel that one thing that this movie accomplishes is, it reminds us that Zuckerberg, aside from being a Harvard Dropout and billionaire, is simply human. We're able to see him as a fallible, human being who saw an opportunity and went buck wild with it.

I thought that I'd end up hating, or at least be very annoyed by the film, but left feeling great about it. If you've got feminist views, you may feel somewhat offended by the way women are marginalized. It is an unfortunate reality that this field is still very much a boy's club... I can't really blame Fincher or the movie for pointing this out.

All in all i give this 4.5 sheep.