A film about Facebook. It surprised me by how good it was. I didn't know any of this stuff about Facebook except for one detail at the start, when Mark Zuckerberg creates a website that compares college girls on the basis of looks.
The main triumph of this is Jesse Eisenberg's ability to play a bad geek. I've seen him play nice geeks before, but that is a cliched role. The Mark Zuckerberg who coded Facebook is portrayed as ruthless, lonesome, ambitious and extremely intelligent. He makes Facebook into a rapid success by making all the right moves, including a partnership with Sean Parker. There is a lot of humour directed at Harvard and its mythical societies. One scene involves some young Harvard scholars answering questions about Harvard's secrets in the freezing cold.
You get an insight into how powerful computer programmers/scientists are in this IT-focussed economy and into the status-obsessed social life of top universities. It's good to learn something from a film. It's succeeded when you feel as if you're in the environment that's being depicted. The Social Network wins on this front.
I'll give this yet another 8/10. I know that I've given a lot of 8s, but that's just the way it is. It gets marked down because I feel that parts of it were too harsh on Zuckerberg. (Also Sean Parker is portrayed as having paedophilic tendencies. I've no idea if this is true. When I searched Google, I could only find scruffy websites and videos promoting this.) Eduardo is portrayed as a nice guy whose good nature was exploited by Zuckerberg. He was involved in the film's making, which makes me suspicious that they biased it towards him. The Winklevoss brothers and their friend Divya are stereotyped as privileged and being used to getting their own way, but are also gentlemen and are likeable characters overall. The film ends with Zuckerberg's hoping that his ex-girlfriend will accept his offer of Facebook friendship, which suggests that he is unhappy with life. The film focusses on Zuckerberg a bit too much. To have got a 9 or a 10, the other characters needed to be developed more.
Funnily enough the attendance at the cinema shows you just how much internet social networking has taken off, 3/10 for popularity.
ReplyDeleteThis is a real shame as the film overall is pretty good (it would never score a 10/10 as I couldn't see myself buying the DVD to watch it over again.
On the actual moving pictures, this film shows a good story of finding something good and wanting it all for yourself, Zuckerberg is shown as the bad guy in the film that actually doesn't care if the real benfactors lose out, even though he has brought this incredible force of internet communication to the fore-front.
I am not sure if the portrayal of Harvard University's elite students is correct as you have seen this in various American comedy films, but the Winklevoss brothers seemed to have the American dream at heart and came across as the usual "jock" powerful, but all round likable characters, even if they had a weedy assistant to suck up to them.
All I can say for Eduardo Saverin is unlucky! Only because he didn't realise he was being removed from the facebook company when the alliance of Mark Zuckerberg and Sean Parker (Napster) was complete.
The film covers in some humorous detail the two court saga's focusing specifically on the intellectual take downs from Zuckerberg against the opposing lawyers. I was particularly impressed by the capability of Jesse Eisenberg to complete these scenes.
Overall I was impressed with the movie/documentary direction and the storyline was very good with a few tense maybe excruciating moments for the actual characters.
7/10, good film, but wouldn't buy it on DVD and wouldn't make my current top ten.