The Social Network
Aaron Sorkin would have us believe that in writing The Social Network, he has not written a definitive account of a young man's life, but a multi-layered one, based on the accounts and testimonies of various people. More than that, we're meant to gain some insights not just into the specific subculture of young men in Ivy League schools in the 21st century, but into modern life itself, into social networking online and off, into generation Z, into the (obnoxiously overused) "zeitgeist."
I would've loved to have seen that movie, but The Social Network is not it.
Let's start with Akira Kurosawa. In his masterpiece, Rashomon, Kurosawa used fiction to question the nature of truth itself.
In stark contrast, The Social Network takes actual people and events and fictionalizes them for dramatic purposes. I'm told it's called artistic license, and I don't disapprove of it in principle. A good story can use the lives of real people as a jumping off point for raising philosophical questions, commenting on or simply highlighting social phenomena, or providing insights into human nature or what is sadly called the human condition (I'm guessing by the same people who overuse zeitgeist, but I have no proof). In Citizen Kane, Orson Welles cannibalized William Randolph Hearst's life, and putting aside its rightfully lauded technical brilliance, it also managed to create a compelling mystery, whose conclusion left me contemplating much larger questions than anything related to Hearst, the actual person.
It may seem extraordinarily unfair of me to compare The Social Network to Rashomon and Citizen Kane, considering the latter two are widely considered to be among the most groundbreaking, influential, timeless masterpieces in the history of cinema. In some respects, it is unfair, but it also serves two very specific purposes. The first is to remind us all what a real masterpiece looks like. The second is to show what great filmmakers can achieve even while working within certain genres and constraints. And the reason I feel it's necessary to reiterate those (if not self evident, then at least widely accepted) views, in relation to The Social Network, is that I am, in part, addressing both reviews and debates sparked by The Social Network over the past month or so, in which it was either praised as a generation-defining film, or criticized for taking too much liberty with the truth for the sake of entertainment, two issues I would like to address (however tangentially), and I find that setting a benchmark can be useful in such instances.
The Social Network is bookended by mirror scenes in which two fictional women have fictional conversations with the character of Mark Zuckerberg. Those scenes were created for a reason. They're there to define and frame the protagonist for the audience. The first both supplies handy (if painfully shallow) motivation, and characterizes the protagonist as an asshole (or an anti-hero, according to Sorkin), and the second simply tells us that he's not really an asshole, which, according to Sorkin, is meant to change our perception of him from anti-hero to tragic hero. I'm starting out by focusing on these two scenes, because they're pure storytelling, unencumbered by any kind of obligation to the truth, and so I consider them to be good indicators of authorial intent, or, in other words, of what Sorkin wants the story to be.
If you happen to like TV shows with vampires in them, you might recognize variations on the simple device used here. It's used to great effect in the season 5 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Fool for Love" in which the object of Spike's (then William's) affection rejects him with the painful words "you're beneath me" a sentiment echoed over a century later by Buffy, using that same pain-inducing phrase. All that Spike has done, all the ways in which he'd evolved, all his attempts to transform himself, are stripped away from him in that moment, and he's exposed as the same man he's always been, perceived by the object of his affection as unworthy not only of love but of basic human kindness. More recently, in The Vampire Diaries, Damon suffers a similar rejection, when his old flame tells him she's only ever loved his brother, and his new love, physically identical to the old one, tells him the same thing.
Being rejected by two women, past and present, in the same way, is a rather effective way of making a character more sympathetic. People in pain are more sympathetic, people in double pain are even more so, and people in pain due to knife-in-the-heart rejection are positively heart wrenching.
In the examples above, we're obviously meant to feel for the rejected character, and see something that those women don't. This is not the case in The Social Network. Here, we're meant to side, in turn, with each of the two women, and accept their judgment and assessment of the protagonist's character as correct. In other words, they're there to tell us what Sorkin wants us to feel and think, and so when I look at The Social Network in its entirety, I use these two scenes as benchmarks of authorial intent. Each other scene in the movie that might be criticized could be excused as a reflection of real events, not really saying anything about what Sorkin meant, wanted to convey, about his views, etc., but these two scenes, the ones which are pure fiction, they're also pure Sorkin, and that makes them incredibly important, though perhaps not in the way they were intended to be.
In the first scene, AlternaZuck obviously treats his girlfriend badly. But other things are happening as well. Specifically, his girlfriend Erica is portrayed as not-as-smart-as AlternaZuck, basically not being able to follow his train of thought during a reasonably simple conversation, even after supposedly being around him for a while. This may be meant to establish AZ as a genius with a severe lack of social skills, but it tells us something more.
It tells us that Sorkin chose to place AZ with a young woman who is prettier than and more socially adept than him, but who is inferior to him when it comes to intelligence. I'm not sure what that says about AZ, but I have a pretty good idea what it says about Sorkin.
Another thing we learn in that scene is that AZ views BU as insignificant (you don't need to study because you go to BU) compared to Harvard. On the other hand, we learn that Harvard isn't good enough either - only some antiquated secret clubs populated by the trust-fund wielding offspring of Harvard alumni allow one to achieve greatness. Is it Erica's perfectly reasonable question about which club is easiest to get into that was meant to hit on some inferiority complex, spurring him on to prove he can get into any of them, or is it that she not only dumped him, but told him that he was an asshole? What is the true source of his obsession? Is it all about getting the girl, all about achieving greatness, all about revenge?
Sorkin would have us believe that it is about a guy who's on the outside looking in, desperate for acceptance, but the motivations he's positing don't hold up within the context of the entire film, possibly because it is encumbered by facts, or possibly because Sorkin didn't really think this through, but instead simply shoved a familiar template that he's comfortable with onto his AZ.
Either way, the inconsistencies grate. And speaking of inconsistencies, where did the guy who couldn't manage a casual conversation disappear to? AZ doesn't say much, but he's perfectly capable of expressing himself to everyone around him when he wants to, so if we're meant to see a truly socially incompetent guy, I'd expect to see him that way throughout the film, or else show development or change in him, but we don't. This leads me to conclude that he just jumped subjects in the first scene to make it clear to us that the woman can't follow his super fast thought processes, and once that was done, he could suddenly talk like a normal human being again, but let's get back to motivation.
Surely, if acceptance is what AZ seeks, then joining in with the Winkelvi is his best course of action, as they can give him what he supposedly wants most, and yet he shuns them. Not only that, but he is portrayed as enjoying his notoriety after the collegiate hot-or-not incident, so which is it?
One could argue that "exclusive is cool" is a variation on his original motivation - if he creates his own exclusive social club online, then he got what he wanted by building something everyone wants to join, instead of hoping that others would accept him into their exclusive social clubs. But if that's the case, then why keep expanding Facebook till it is no longer exclusive (and so no longer cool)?
He obviously isn't after the money. He could've cashed in at many points but didn't. It's not for girls or a party lifestyle, as he's depicted as being more interested in the work than his groupies or his friends' parties. The only things left are striving for greatness and something extraordinarily petty yet not particularly clear regarding proving something about his abilities to Erica, but then Erica was never shown to doubt his abilities - she was shown to doubt his character, so how does building a great big website affect that in any way? And if it's about her doubting his social abilities as they relate to joining the supposed elite, then we're back to the Winkelvi and his choosing his new website over them. In fact, he did the one thing that would absolutely guarantee that he would never get into one of those clubs - he left Harvard completely. Which brings me back to the first scene, where he mocks BU as not requiring study, and his supposed obsession with Harvard's elite. What we see AZ do throughout the film simply doesn't fit anything that happens in that first, defining scene.
AZ's motivations, as initially laid out for us by Sorkin, are murky at best, and at times outright contradictory to his behavior throughout the film.
He didn't care about Harvard or its clubs, or he wouldn't have shafted the Winkelvi and left Harvard.
He didn't care about getting laid, partying, or being popular, or he would've taken advantage of his status, especially in CA with JT, but even before that when The Facebook was becoming popular.
All that's left of Sorkin's original motivation scene is The Girl, and even that is unbelievably weak. If one wants to tell a story about a guy who does everything to impress a girl, then we need to know why he cares so much. If you want us to believe that a guy goes on to shape his entire career around that one girl, you need to make it believable. She needs to be special to him, they need to have a relationship, she needs to be somewhere in his orbit. What I don't buy is a guy obsessing for years about a girl he used to date when he was a teenager, without doing anything that would indicate that he actually wants her back, or cares about her, or that there was anything even remotely unique about their relationship. Perhaps this too is a result of reality getting in Sorkin's way. The real Mark Zuckerberg had a girlfriend basically this entire time. She was written out of the film, which is fine, but making him explicitly obsessed with someone else to the extent required for her to become a believable major motivation, would involve creating and inserting a central character who doesn't exist into a story based on actual people's lives, which would cause too many plot holes that would have to be addressed in the script to make some sort of sense.
And so, like all the other motivations we were sold at the beginning, she simply didn't fit into the story Sorkin was hired to tell, and so once again we're left with nothing. Nothing to explain his actions and no insight into his character, or into his character as a prototype of an outsider yearning for acceptance, or into his character as a prototype of socially awkward youngsters relying on the internet for social interaction.
What we're left with is a young man who's very good at spotting trends and at reading social structures, who's also great with computers. He decides to combine the two skills and focus his entire life on this one big project. On the way, he may or may not have been mean to his friends, to an unknown degree. And maybe, just maybe, by process of elimination, and against authorial intent, we might conclude that he strives for greatness.
Sorkin stripped Zuckerberg's life and used it as filler for the story he decided to tell, disregarding the fact that the two don't fit, instead of creatively using a story based on actual events to raise questions or gain insights. So much for the Citizen Kane approach to artistic license, but what about the bigger picture? What about the Kurosawa Factor? Surely, the film isn't just about the life of one guy starting a successful website. Our protagonist is being sued by several people. Like the promotional posters say, he's made enemies. The depositions are the frame from which we embark on a journey down memory lane, slowly discovering how he came to be there.
This, of course, is a structure that lends itself to shifting points of view. The way the Winkelvi view events is not the way AZ views them, is not the way his former best friend views them, etc. Because of the possibility of differing view points, this structure is a remarkably useful vehicle for creating mystery, and it is an excellent vessel for raising interesting questions and providing commentary on a huge variety of issues. We could see how people from different backgrounds view the world, and we could comment on it, on social structures, on entitlement and ambition, on concepts of honor, on the importance of money, or we could go an entirely different way and ask whether we can really know another human being, raise questions about the nature of human friendships and relationships and emotions. We could look at truth and narratives and comment on modernism and postmodernism. We could explore questions of biology and the arguments for primacy of nature versus nurture. We could discuss the nature of memory and human fallibility, the progression of youth and maturity, bias, bigotry, discrimination, globalization, public personas, fame, genius, communication, privacy, liberalism, conservatism, feminism, desperation, love...
Pick a card, any card. Please.
But no, The Social Network doesn't pick a card, nor does it comment on the deck. It just sits there, being "objective." It just tells us some of what happened when a kid built a big website and pissed some people off on the way. There is one single instance where an actual statement is made, with Erica once again used as a mouthpiece to state the obvious: that the internet is written in ink. Apparently that was sufficient for Sorkin, because he believes that it's A. a revelation and B. a bad thing, and he's wrong on both counts, but that's not the point. The point is that there is no attempt to use this huge canvas and all these opportunities for anything original or creative or even mildly thought provoking. Having the people who aren't AZ there only serves to justify scenes he's not in. All scenes are shot from the same figurative fly on the wall perspective. Everyone feels betrayed, but we learn nothing about the nature of betrayal, on its effects or its causes. The protagonist is alone, but we learn nothing about the nature of loneliness, on its causes or its effects, not in general and not as they relate to the people in the story. And then it stops. Not because there was any kind of resolution to anything, or a marked changed in anyone or anything, but because it was time to end the story.
And this present, in film time, is where the second woman resides. She's a lawyer, not a student, but like Erica, she's also much more attractive than AZ, and her job description entails understanding other people, so presumably she too has better social skills than AZ. Also like Erica, she's relatively low on her peers' food chain. While Erica only attends BU while hanging out with students from Harvard, the lawyer isn't a partner in a reputable firm or a hot shot of any kind within her profession. In fact, she makes a point of telling us that - if even a lowly minion like her could make a case against AZ, then surely he must settle.
Once again, the woman is allowed to be prettier and better at social interaction than AZ, but not as smart or as successful as he is. The only time I can remember her saying anything before her final scene is to express her admiration for AZ's accomplishments. And after sitting there listening for who knows how long, she explains to AZ how screwed he is, then tells him, and us, that Erica was wrong, and that he's not really an asshole, and instead offers her opinion that he's actually trying to be an asshole, at which point we're meant to take her (or Sorkin's) word for it, but he hasn't done the groundwork that would make that possible for me as a viewer, nor do I see the difference if the behavior is the same and we don't get to see anything deeper or more intimate than that.
Ultimately, The Social Network tells us that AZ may or may not have done some mean things to some people. If he did, we don't know to what extent or why. He's completely alone, but we don't know why he chose to isolate himself. The only thing we've consistently seen him working toward and striving for and saying that he wants is his website, and the motivations posited in the beginning don't track, so we don't even know why that's important to him. When the film is over, we've learned nothing about either AZ or the real Zuckerberg, we've learned nothing about his generation, we've learned nothing about social structures or social networks.
What we have learned is that Sorkin thinks AZ's been through a journey, and that we've been on it with him, and that through that journey we were supposed to learn that even though he seems like an asshole, really he's just trying to be an asshole. We also learned that Sorkin prefers his women to be pretty and socially competent but not too successful or too bright. And the very last thing we learned is that we're supposed to feel sorry for AZ, for no other reason than the fact that he places an inexplicably high value on whether or not the girl who told him he was an asshole when she broke up with him years ago will or will not accept his Facebook friend request, all of which supposedly makes him into a tragic hero, and I'm sorry, but I just don't buy any of it.
The acting is pretty good. The visuals are rather dated and cliched, but adequate for the story. The misogyny is literally nausea-inducing in places. The script is full of inconsistent characterization and plot holes and lacks any imagination or any attempt to glean any sort of meaning or raise any interesting questions. The dialogue is quick and mostly clever. Despite its mediocrity, I'm guessing it's gonna win some awards.
Finally, for the record, everything I've said here is based on my personal memories and impressions. I may well have gotten some of the specific details (like names) wrong, but I'm not watching this thing again, and I don't think I could stomach reading any more about it. Also, no proofing or rewriting has taken place, and for this I apologize.
I would've loved to have seen that movie, but The Social Network is not it.
Let's start with Akira Kurosawa. In his masterpiece, Rashomon, Kurosawa used fiction to question the nature of truth itself.
In stark contrast, The Social Network takes actual people and events and fictionalizes them for dramatic purposes. I'm told it's called artistic license, and I don't disapprove of it in principle. A good story can use the lives of real people as a jumping off point for raising philosophical questions, commenting on or simply highlighting social phenomena, or providing insights into human nature or what is sadly called the human condition (I'm guessing by the same people who overuse zeitgeist, but I have no proof). In Citizen Kane, Orson Welles cannibalized William Randolph Hearst's life, and putting aside its rightfully lauded technical brilliance, it also managed to create a compelling mystery, whose conclusion left me contemplating much larger questions than anything related to Hearst, the actual person.
It may seem extraordinarily unfair of me to compare The Social Network to Rashomon and Citizen Kane, considering the latter two are widely considered to be among the most groundbreaking, influential, timeless masterpieces in the history of cinema. In some respects, it is unfair, but it also serves two very specific purposes. The first is to remind us all what a real masterpiece looks like. The second is to show what great filmmakers can achieve even while working within certain genres and constraints. And the reason I feel it's necessary to reiterate those (if not self evident, then at least widely accepted) views, in relation to The Social Network, is that I am, in part, addressing both reviews and debates sparked by The Social Network over the past month or so, in which it was either praised as a generation-defining film, or criticized for taking too much liberty with the truth for the sake of entertainment, two issues I would like to address (however tangentially), and I find that setting a benchmark can be useful in such instances.
The Social Network is bookended by mirror scenes in which two fictional women have fictional conversations with the character of Mark Zuckerberg. Those scenes were created for a reason. They're there to define and frame the protagonist for the audience. The first both supplies handy (if painfully shallow) motivation, and characterizes the protagonist as an asshole (or an anti-hero, according to Sorkin), and the second simply tells us that he's not really an asshole, which, according to Sorkin, is meant to change our perception of him from anti-hero to tragic hero. I'm starting out by focusing on these two scenes, because they're pure storytelling, unencumbered by any kind of obligation to the truth, and so I consider them to be good indicators of authorial intent, or, in other words, of what Sorkin wants the story to be.
If you happen to like TV shows with vampires in them, you might recognize variations on the simple device used here. It's used to great effect in the season 5 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Fool for Love" in which the object of Spike's (then William's) affection rejects him with the painful words "you're beneath me" a sentiment echoed over a century later by Buffy, using that same pain-inducing phrase. All that Spike has done, all the ways in which he'd evolved, all his attempts to transform himself, are stripped away from him in that moment, and he's exposed as the same man he's always been, perceived by the object of his affection as unworthy not only of love but of basic human kindness. More recently, in The Vampire Diaries, Damon suffers a similar rejection, when his old flame tells him she's only ever loved his brother, and his new love, physically identical to the old one, tells him the same thing.
Being rejected by two women, past and present, in the same way, is a rather effective way of making a character more sympathetic. People in pain are more sympathetic, people in double pain are even more so, and people in pain due to knife-in-the-heart rejection are positively heart wrenching.
In the examples above, we're obviously meant to feel for the rejected character, and see something that those women don't. This is not the case in The Social Network. Here, we're meant to side, in turn, with each of the two women, and accept their judgment and assessment of the protagonist's character as correct. In other words, they're there to tell us what Sorkin wants us to feel and think, and so when I look at The Social Network in its entirety, I use these two scenes as benchmarks of authorial intent. Each other scene in the movie that might be criticized could be excused as a reflection of real events, not really saying anything about what Sorkin meant, wanted to convey, about his views, etc., but these two scenes, the ones which are pure fiction, they're also pure Sorkin, and that makes them incredibly important, though perhaps not in the way they were intended to be.
In the first scene, AlternaZuck obviously treats his girlfriend badly. But other things are happening as well. Specifically, his girlfriend Erica is portrayed as not-as-smart-as AlternaZuck, basically not being able to follow his train of thought during a reasonably simple conversation, even after supposedly being around him for a while. This may be meant to establish AZ as a genius with a severe lack of social skills, but it tells us something more.
It tells us that Sorkin chose to place AZ with a young woman who is prettier than and more socially adept than him, but who is inferior to him when it comes to intelligence. I'm not sure what that says about AZ, but I have a pretty good idea what it says about Sorkin.
Another thing we learn in that scene is that AZ views BU as insignificant (you don't need to study because you go to BU) compared to Harvard. On the other hand, we learn that Harvard isn't good enough either - only some antiquated secret clubs populated by the trust-fund wielding offspring of Harvard alumni allow one to achieve greatness. Is it Erica's perfectly reasonable question about which club is easiest to get into that was meant to hit on some inferiority complex, spurring him on to prove he can get into any of them, or is it that she not only dumped him, but told him that he was an asshole? What is the true source of his obsession? Is it all about getting the girl, all about achieving greatness, all about revenge?
Sorkin would have us believe that it is about a guy who's on the outside looking in, desperate for acceptance, but the motivations he's positing don't hold up within the context of the entire film, possibly because it is encumbered by facts, or possibly because Sorkin didn't really think this through, but instead simply shoved a familiar template that he's comfortable with onto his AZ.
Either way, the inconsistencies grate. And speaking of inconsistencies, where did the guy who couldn't manage a casual conversation disappear to? AZ doesn't say much, but he's perfectly capable of expressing himself to everyone around him when he wants to, so if we're meant to see a truly socially incompetent guy, I'd expect to see him that way throughout the film, or else show development or change in him, but we don't. This leads me to conclude that he just jumped subjects in the first scene to make it clear to us that the woman can't follow his super fast thought processes, and once that was done, he could suddenly talk like a normal human being again, but let's get back to motivation.
Surely, if acceptance is what AZ seeks, then joining in with the Winkelvi is his best course of action, as they can give him what he supposedly wants most, and yet he shuns them. Not only that, but he is portrayed as enjoying his notoriety after the collegiate hot-or-not incident, so which is it?
One could argue that "exclusive is cool" is a variation on his original motivation - if he creates his own exclusive social club online, then he got what he wanted by building something everyone wants to join, instead of hoping that others would accept him into their exclusive social clubs. But if that's the case, then why keep expanding Facebook till it is no longer exclusive (and so no longer cool)?
He obviously isn't after the money. He could've cashed in at many points but didn't. It's not for girls or a party lifestyle, as he's depicted as being more interested in the work than his groupies or his friends' parties. The only things left are striving for greatness and something extraordinarily petty yet not particularly clear regarding proving something about his abilities to Erica, but then Erica was never shown to doubt his abilities - she was shown to doubt his character, so how does building a great big website affect that in any way? And if it's about her doubting his social abilities as they relate to joining the supposed elite, then we're back to the Winkelvi and his choosing his new website over them. In fact, he did the one thing that would absolutely guarantee that he would never get into one of those clubs - he left Harvard completely. Which brings me back to the first scene, where he mocks BU as not requiring study, and his supposed obsession with Harvard's elite. What we see AZ do throughout the film simply doesn't fit anything that happens in that first, defining scene.
AZ's motivations, as initially laid out for us by Sorkin, are murky at best, and at times outright contradictory to his behavior throughout the film.
He didn't care about Harvard or its clubs, or he wouldn't have shafted the Winkelvi and left Harvard.
He didn't care about getting laid, partying, or being popular, or he would've taken advantage of his status, especially in CA with JT, but even before that when The Facebook was becoming popular.
All that's left of Sorkin's original motivation scene is The Girl, and even that is unbelievably weak. If one wants to tell a story about a guy who does everything to impress a girl, then we need to know why he cares so much. If you want us to believe that a guy goes on to shape his entire career around that one girl, you need to make it believable. She needs to be special to him, they need to have a relationship, she needs to be somewhere in his orbit. What I don't buy is a guy obsessing for years about a girl he used to date when he was a teenager, without doing anything that would indicate that he actually wants her back, or cares about her, or that there was anything even remotely unique about their relationship. Perhaps this too is a result of reality getting in Sorkin's way. The real Mark Zuckerberg had a girlfriend basically this entire time. She was written out of the film, which is fine, but making him explicitly obsessed with someone else to the extent required for her to become a believable major motivation, would involve creating and inserting a central character who doesn't exist into a story based on actual people's lives, which would cause too many plot holes that would have to be addressed in the script to make some sort of sense.
And so, like all the other motivations we were sold at the beginning, she simply didn't fit into the story Sorkin was hired to tell, and so once again we're left with nothing. Nothing to explain his actions and no insight into his character, or into his character as a prototype of an outsider yearning for acceptance, or into his character as a prototype of socially awkward youngsters relying on the internet for social interaction.
What we're left with is a young man who's very good at spotting trends and at reading social structures, who's also great with computers. He decides to combine the two skills and focus his entire life on this one big project. On the way, he may or may not have been mean to his friends, to an unknown degree. And maybe, just maybe, by process of elimination, and against authorial intent, we might conclude that he strives for greatness.
Sorkin stripped Zuckerberg's life and used it as filler for the story he decided to tell, disregarding the fact that the two don't fit, instead of creatively using a story based on actual events to raise questions or gain insights. So much for the Citizen Kane approach to artistic license, but what about the bigger picture? What about the Kurosawa Factor? Surely, the film isn't just about the life of one guy starting a successful website. Our protagonist is being sued by several people. Like the promotional posters say, he's made enemies. The depositions are the frame from which we embark on a journey down memory lane, slowly discovering how he came to be there.
This, of course, is a structure that lends itself to shifting points of view. The way the Winkelvi view events is not the way AZ views them, is not the way his former best friend views them, etc. Because of the possibility of differing view points, this structure is a remarkably useful vehicle for creating mystery, and it is an excellent vessel for raising interesting questions and providing commentary on a huge variety of issues. We could see how people from different backgrounds view the world, and we could comment on it, on social structures, on entitlement and ambition, on concepts of honor, on the importance of money, or we could go an entirely different way and ask whether we can really know another human being, raise questions about the nature of human friendships and relationships and emotions. We could look at truth and narratives and comment on modernism and postmodernism. We could explore questions of biology and the arguments for primacy of nature versus nurture. We could discuss the nature of memory and human fallibility, the progression of youth and maturity, bias, bigotry, discrimination, globalization, public personas, fame, genius, communication, privacy, liberalism, conservatism, feminism, desperation, love...
Pick a card, any card. Please.
But no, The Social Network doesn't pick a card, nor does it comment on the deck. It just sits there, being "objective." It just tells us some of what happened when a kid built a big website and pissed some people off on the way. There is one single instance where an actual statement is made, with Erica once again used as a mouthpiece to state the obvious: that the internet is written in ink. Apparently that was sufficient for Sorkin, because he believes that it's A. a revelation and B. a bad thing, and he's wrong on both counts, but that's not the point. The point is that there is no attempt to use this huge canvas and all these opportunities for anything original or creative or even mildly thought provoking. Having the people who aren't AZ there only serves to justify scenes he's not in. All scenes are shot from the same figurative fly on the wall perspective. Everyone feels betrayed, but we learn nothing about the nature of betrayal, on its effects or its causes. The protagonist is alone, but we learn nothing about the nature of loneliness, on its causes or its effects, not in general and not as they relate to the people in the story. And then it stops. Not because there was any kind of resolution to anything, or a marked changed in anyone or anything, but because it was time to end the story.
And this present, in film time, is where the second woman resides. She's a lawyer, not a student, but like Erica, she's also much more attractive than AZ, and her job description entails understanding other people, so presumably she too has better social skills than AZ. Also like Erica, she's relatively low on her peers' food chain. While Erica only attends BU while hanging out with students from Harvard, the lawyer isn't a partner in a reputable firm or a hot shot of any kind within her profession. In fact, she makes a point of telling us that - if even a lowly minion like her could make a case against AZ, then surely he must settle.
Once again, the woman is allowed to be prettier and better at social interaction than AZ, but not as smart or as successful as he is. The only time I can remember her saying anything before her final scene is to express her admiration for AZ's accomplishments. And after sitting there listening for who knows how long, she explains to AZ how screwed he is, then tells him, and us, that Erica was wrong, and that he's not really an asshole, and instead offers her opinion that he's actually trying to be an asshole, at which point we're meant to take her (or Sorkin's) word for it, but he hasn't done the groundwork that would make that possible for me as a viewer, nor do I see the difference if the behavior is the same and we don't get to see anything deeper or more intimate than that.
Ultimately, The Social Network tells us that AZ may or may not have done some mean things to some people. If he did, we don't know to what extent or why. He's completely alone, but we don't know why he chose to isolate himself. The only thing we've consistently seen him working toward and striving for and saying that he wants is his website, and the motivations posited in the beginning don't track, so we don't even know why that's important to him. When the film is over, we've learned nothing about either AZ or the real Zuckerberg, we've learned nothing about his generation, we've learned nothing about social structures or social networks.
What we have learned is that Sorkin thinks AZ's been through a journey, and that we've been on it with him, and that through that journey we were supposed to learn that even though he seems like an asshole, really he's just trying to be an asshole. We also learned that Sorkin prefers his women to be pretty and socially competent but not too successful or too bright. And the very last thing we learned is that we're supposed to feel sorry for AZ, for no other reason than the fact that he places an inexplicably high value on whether or not the girl who told him he was an asshole when she broke up with him years ago will or will not accept his Facebook friend request, all of which supposedly makes him into a tragic hero, and I'm sorry, but I just don't buy any of it.
The acting is pretty good. The visuals are rather dated and cliched, but adequate for the story. The misogyny is literally nausea-inducing in places. The script is full of inconsistent characterization and plot holes and lacks any imagination or any attempt to glean any sort of meaning or raise any interesting questions. The dialogue is quick and mostly clever. Despite its mediocrity, I'm guessing it's gonna win some awards.
Finally, for the record, everything I've said here is based on my personal memories and impressions. I may well have gotten some of the specific details (like names) wrong, but I'm not watching this thing again, and I don't think I could stomach reading any more about it. Also, no proofing or rewriting has taken place, and for this I apologize.