The first thing you want to do after seeing the docudrama nicknamed “The Facebook Movie” is go online. You can’t wait to find out more about the real people and the facts behind the founding of the transformative Web portal that it depicts.
This immediate craving for a keyboard — and to know more about inventor and multibillionaire Mark Zuckerberg — means three things about “The Social Network,” a career-topping achievement from Hollywood masters, director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.
The movie is so meaningful, so engrossing, that it makes a “Revenge of the Nerds” — or, Revenge On the Nerds — saga into the seminal cinematic event of the Internet Age. The movie’s one noteworthy flaw is that it doesn’t provide enough backstory for its characters. And, the movie offers such a powerful meta-experience that it is not only about the entity that made it easier for us to live so much inside a digitized alternate reality; it also provokes the cyberspace desires that it both lionizes and questions.
This reportedly semifictionalized account is adapted from the book “The Accidental Billionaires” by Ben Mezrich. It begins in 2003 to show how an acerbic, sexually repressed 19-year-old computer prodigy may have screwed over his Harvard schoolmates to become one of the richest men in the world by changing how it communicates.
It’s better not to know in advance too much of the true story. The film’s version of events is a time-shifting toggle between Facebook’s dorm room development and the later legal battles over it. The antihero’s journey evolves from infectiously frenetic and darkly comic to tragic.
You’ll have to judge for yourself about the actions of Zuckerberg (indie star Jesse Eisenberg). Did a jealous geek steal the idea of Facebook from snooty upper-class twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (played amazingly by one actor, Armie Hammer)? Or did he simply have the know-how they didn’t to effectively implement it? Did Zuckerberg ruthlessly cut out his loyal BFF? Or did early investor Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) fail to earn his full share in a business that quickly grew beyond his capabilities?
As successful as the acting performances are here — also including Justin Timberlake, terrific as hard-partying Silicon Valley schemer Sean Parker — the main star of today’s tour de force is Sorkin’s genius script. Directed by Fincher with speedy momentum and gratifying elaboration, scene after scene of eloquent repartee sizzles between the eccentric young personalities.
Sequences brim with insight about how ego, hormones, greed and class consciousness inspire the quest for an American Dream that neglects the primacy of authentic, in-the-flesh human relationships. In that sense, it seems, the socially awkward father of “The Social Network” might not be alone.
