Film File - The Social Network

As a product of its time, Facebook will surely enter the history books as one of the more notable inventions of the early 21st century. A classic example of acorn to oak as a small notion to help one young man’s social life, it mushroomed and transformed eons beyond its original intention to become one of the modern world’s most ubiquitous inventions used by 500 million members - and rising. Like all great discoveries, however, the story behind Facebook has more than one image - a world of betrayal, greed, larceny and enormous sums of money. Like the advert says: 'You don’t get to make 500 million friends without making a few enemies’. In the film, director David Fincher ('Fight Club’ and 'Se7en’) and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin ('The West Wing’) explore the moment at which Facebook, as the most revolutionary social phenomenon of the new century, was invented through the perspectives of the clever young men who played various roles in its inception. The film moves from the halls of Harvard University to the cubicles of Silicon Valley in recounting the heady early days of a culture-changing phenomenon - and the how it both pulled a group of young revolutionaries together and then split them apart. In the midst of the chaos are Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), the Harvard student who conceived a website that redefined the world’s social fabric overnight; Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), once Zuckerberg’s close friend, who provided the seed money for the fledgling company; Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) who helped bankroll the venture, and the Winklevoss twins (Armie Hammer and Josh Prince), the Harvard classmates who claimed that Zuckerberg stole their idea before successfully suing him for ownership of it. One night in October of 2003, after having just broken up with his girlfriend, Mark Zuckerberg hacks into the university’s computers to create a site that forms a database of all the women on campus, then lines up two pictures next to each other and asks the user to choose which is 'hotter’. He calls the site Facemash, and it instantly goes viral, crashing the entire Harvard system and generating campus-wide controversy in breaching security, violating copyrights and invading individual privacy. It turned out to be the moment that Facebook was born. Shortly after, Zuckerberg launches www.thefacebook.com, which will spread like wildfire from one screen to the next across Harvard, through the Ivy League to Silicon Valley, and then literally to the entire world. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin loosely adapts and dramatises Ben Mezrich’s book 'The Accidental Billionaire’ into a tale around the very American theme of invention - and this new device that fundamentally alters everyday life. In previous generations, it has been the radio, the telephone, the car, the television, the computer. Today, it is the social network. Eisenberg mostly plays Zuckerberg as the villain of the piece, a cold and calculating young man quick to seize on the commercial aspects of the invention and ready to ruthlessly capitalise on its possibilities for himself. As the guilty party who began Facebook as a means to avenge himself upon the girlfriend who dumped him, Zuckerberg’s relative immaturity as a human being sits uneasily beside the huge media player he subsequently became on the back of a social tool that changed his life, and the world. Moving back and forth in time, the story charts the birth of a particular American dream, and the obstacles and alliances it took to bring it to the world. The cast is well-chosen - particularly Timberlake showing he’s got more than just singing ability to fall back on, and Garfield as the supportive friend discarded conveniently in pursuit of bigger profits. This is a well-written drama with nary a shot or explosion to ramp up the action, but all the more worthwhile for its portrayal of greed and its aftermath. In a country currently picking over the carcass of the Celtic Tiger, there are more than a few aspects of 'The Social Network’ that will ring true on this side of the pond. And indeed, if only a fraction of Facebook members decide to see the film, it’s already guaranteed blockbuster status.