REVIEW: Social Network Brilliantly Explores the Facebook Frontier

The Social Network is based only roughly on Ben Mezrich's recently published The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal. In interviews (most notably the one he gave to Mark Harris, in New York Magazine) Sorkin has said there are multiple stories here, and instead of fixating solely on Zuckerberg's, he's woven together the stories of several secondary players, including those of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the Olympic rowing champs -- and twins! -- who had sought Zuckerberg's help in building an exclusive Harvard matchmaking site and who eventually brought a lawsuit against them for stealing his idea. An even bigger and more piercing presence in the Fincher/Sorkin version is Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerberg's best friend at Harvard, who put up seed money for "The Facebook" (as it was originally called) and was later edged out in a bit of ruthless but not atypical contractual wheeler-dealing. (Saverin also sued Zuckerberg, reportedly regaining a large chunk of his ownership in a settlement.)

Sorkin and Fincher tell their version of the story by cutting between the early, heady days of Zuckerberg's enterprise and the more somber, later era (really just a few years later), in which the players sit around an oblong table in a law office somewhere, glaring at one another as they give (or, in Zuckerberg's case, pretty much refuse to give) their depositions. Saverin is played by Andrew Garfield, who's equal parts trusting, smooth and awkward -- at one point in his escalating frustration during their student years, he asks Zuckerberg, "How do you do this thing where you manage to get all the girls to hate us?"

The well-heeled, golden-boy Winklevosses -- or the "Winklevi," as Zuckerberg archly calls them -- are played by one actor, Armie Hammer, who brings both an air of gentlemanly breeding and gentle self-satire to these dual roles. The Winklevosses' wedge-shaped bodies appear to come complete with wedge-shaped brains -- they just can't believe they could ever come out on the wrong side of any equation -- and in one of the movie's funniest and sharpest scenes, they trek into the office of an eye-rolling Lawrence Summers (played, wonderfully, by Douglas Urbanski) to assert that by stealing from them, Zuckerberg has broken not just state and federal laws, but Harvard law.

A fourth and more sinister player in this little tale of Internet intrigue is Sean Parker, the wily playboy founder of Napster, played by Justin Timberlake: He's Beelzebub in skinny lapels. But just as all of these players are satellites in the Zuckerberg story, all of these performers cluster around the movie's weirdly magnetic center: Jesse Eisenberg's performance.

Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg as a willful naif, a guy with zero social skills who sees no reason to develop any. He struts around campus in baggy getups that are always accessorized, even in winter, with athletic flip-flops. (When it's cold, he bows to practicality by adding a pair of thick white socks.) Young Zuckerberg's exact layer in the social strata is never specified, but it's clear that class insecurity plays some part in his overall, if you'll pardon the coined expression, assholery. And as Eisenberg plays him, we also sense that there might be some chemical or neurological misfiring: An Aspergery remoteness kicks in whenever Zuckerberg is faced with someone who craves a genuine, emotional response from him.

I can't remember the last time I loved such a defiantly unlikable performance. Eisenberg has a nerdily angelic face -- his lips are so red, they look as if he's been sucking on cherry Popsicles. But there's nothing sweet about this performance: In his eyes, we mostly see calculation and a businesslike reckoning of where he stands -- with everyone -- at any given moment. Occasionally, when he's forced to confront another character's pain or anger, a flicker of confusion will cross his brow, the way a mixed-up dog will hesitate before he bites. I'm not quite sure how Eisenberg -- formerly the gangly, sympathetic hero of movies like The Squid and the Whale and Adventureland -- channels this kind of befuddled darkness. And while it's tempting to frame The Social Network as a modern-age Citizen Kane, what's perhaps most remarkable about Eisenberg's performance is how close he holds us even as he exerts almost negative charisma. He's no Orson Welles. So why is it you can't take your eyes off him?

Fincher clearly knows what he's got here. The Social Network is a trim, taut piece of work. In terms of technical dazzle, it's Fincher's most modest movie yet. It may also be his greatest: He has perhaps reached a point where he has nothing to prove, which is precisely when many filmmakers start doing their best work. The picture sails by, fast, on Sorkin's brainy, colloquial dialogue. But even though there are no grand set pieces or ambitious tracking shots, I think it's dangerous to assert, as I'm sure people will, that The Social Network isn't cinematic. It's cinematic in the way All the President's Men is: You always want to know where these characters are headed next, what they're going to do and say. Fincher keeps up with them every moment: Too many clever camera angles or novelty cutting would only get in his way. That means the crisp simplicity of Jeff Cronenwerth's cinematography and Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall's editing has to speak for itself, and it does.

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