The Social Network

A film built on the founding of a website. It opens in a bar. Mark and his girlfriend are talking, the conversation ends badly, and she leaves. The same night Mark builds a site in his dorm room. He puts photographs of women at the university side by side to be voted on, and within hours the site brings down the university's network. Three students come to him afterwards. They describe their own idea for a social network and ask him to code it. Mark agrees, then stalls, and launches his own site. From there the film runs in two deposition rooms at once. On one side those three students, on the other the co-founder and friend Eduardo; the testimony tells the past. What the narrative is interested in is not technology but exclusion: the film is about a young man who was not let into a club turning the whole world into one. The Eduardo line is the real tragedy. The person who put in the money is pushed further out and it ends with a signature. The dialogue is very fast. The script was deliberately written on people cutting across each other, and the opening scene establishes that tempo from the start. The twins were played by one actor. Two actors worked on set and one of the faces was replaced digitally. The music is by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and won an Academy Award; the film also won for adapted screenplay and editing. How faithful the narrative is was argued over, and the source book itself was rejected by the founders. Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer and Rooney Mara are in the cast. David Fincher directed; the screenplay is by Aaron Sorkin. Who it is for: anyone who likes films built on dialogue. Who it is not for: anyone expecting documentary accuracy; the narrative is an interpretation and does not hide it.