The Social Network, directed by David Fincher in 2010, in my opinion is one of the best films of the 2010s and is one of my personal favorites. It stars Jesse Eisenburg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake. The movie is classified as a drama, a historic event and is rated PG-13 . I chose this film to review because it is interesting and based on the true story of how Facebook came to be. Media is a large component in allowing our media group to share news, so as a tribute to the original social networking website I chose this movie.
In the fall of 2003 Harvard undergrad Mark Zuckerberg and best friend Eduardo Saverin developed a networking website Face Mash. The website spread so fast it crashed Harvard's Internet, and showed the two that it has serious potential. Changes are made to the website, and as the website grows so does Mark's ego and agenda. The two storylines taking place in this film are Mark's time developing and popularizing his networking site and the other taking place in court offices in the aftermath of Zuckerberg's actions. Enemies, betrayal, and lost friendships all became primary factors along the way in developing the youngest billionaire of all time and his company that is now known as Facebook.
This movie is not a hero’s story, or a story about an underdog out working the rest. The movie's tagline is “you don’t make 500 million friends without making a few enemies' ' referring to Mark having to lose some friends because he was rising to the top. But Mark Zuckerberg is not this movie's protagonist. This story is about answering a question spoken in some of the first lines of the movie, “how do you distinguish yourself in a population?” I interpreted the movie as an examination of how the drive to distinguish yourself and how the feeling like you have no special character traits that put you above others can drive a determined person to do things they wouldn’t normally do. Selfishness, greed, and narcissism cause people to push friends or loved ones away just to achieve their goals. Viewers will watch as Mark loses his friends and the help around him during his development in the story. Mark's personality and attitude change in little details of his dialogue. He deliberately disrespects others, he won’t listen to anything people talk to him about, and is only concerned with himself. This all is because class and power are what Mark sees as the way he can distinguish himself, among a school full of students with 1600s on their SAT’s he found this as his way to go up the ranks. The drive for power, popularity, and acceptance from others is what director David Fincher sees as what a college student really wants.
The movie's themes come together to show that young adults and college students of our generation all want to grow up to be special, everyone wants something, and some people will go way too far to reach these selfish wants exactly as Mark Zuckerberg did. He pushed everyone who was nice to him out of his life just for personal gain, all because when he finally did start feeling accomplished and felt powerful, he became addicted, and lost every bit of humbleness he had left in him. By the end of this movie, karma does not serve justice to our characters. Mark does not lose his company and isn’t punished too harshly. But, in the final moments of the film Mark does finally get a harsh reality check and sees who he’s turned into. He knows his actions were unjustified, and wrong. He betrayed, stole, and lost himself in the process of his growth. Fincher’s depictions of how the attempt to distinguish one's image to be accepted by others, and the lengths people will go out of their way for that shows how this movie isn’t really a hero's journey or underdog tale about a flawless protagonist. It is a tragedy. The tragedy of everyone who crossed Mark along his way of rising to the top. In his final scene of the movie, while he reflects on his past decisions, he goes on Facebook one more time to look up the first person he drove away from him because of his actions, and adds them as a friend as a sign of forgiveness and acceptance. What would 500 million friends be worth if none of them truly mean anything to you?
If you are interested in watching The Social Network it is currently available on Hulu.
For more information about the movie please visit: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/