I did notice the presentation of women in poor light in ‘The Social Network’ but I also tried to pat down my feministic head which raised in anger, because women are not central to the theme of this movie and they happen to be there in the light that the protagonists see them and not how we wish to see them.
Now, that I have gotten that point out of the door; let me move on to the best part of this movie – crisp dialogue. Never before have I seen contemporary film have such good ‘blink your eye and you would miss it’, dialogue and thanks to Aaron Sorkin who makes a dull theme of internet programming come to life.
There is a shot in the movie when Mark Zuckerberg(Jesse Eisenberg), the nerdy creator of ‘Facebook’ is in the middle of a lawsuit and he notices that it is raining and stares outside the window and the lawyers in front of him get annoyed;
Lawyer: "Mr. Zuckerberg, do I have your full attention?"
Mark Zuckerberg: "No."
Lawyer: "Do you think I deserve it?"
Mark Zuckerberg: "What?"
Lawyer: "Do you think I deserve your full attention?"
Mark: "I had to swear an oath before we began this deposition, and I don't want to perjure myself, so I have a legal obligation to say no."
Lawyer: "Okay...no. You don't think I deserve your attention."
Mark Zuckerberg: "I think if your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall, they have the right to give it a try, but there's no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. You have part of my attention - you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing. Did I adequately answer your condescending question?
Look at it this way, do you not in your daily life meet people who are arrogant because they are so knowledgeable! And if you are the creator of an algorithm, similar to the one used in chess, to build a social networking site, the condescending attitude is understandable, if not entirely justified.
The story of ‘The Social Network’ is about how a guy, who has only one best friend in the world but builds a social network of more than 1 million users. It is also the story of a genius who although is a narcissist, is insecure about not having a very active social life, whether it is being in a relationship or getting membership into exclusive clubs of Harvard.
Also when you are a genius who wants to be ‘wired’ to your laptop most of the time, you fail to relate to the mundane things of life and that is how he gets sued by 2 different sets of people , first by his best friend Eduardo Saverin and second by the Winklevoss brothers(Cameron and Taylor).
The camera cuts back and forth from the scene of Zuckerberg’s trial to the dark dorms of Harvard. Having broken up with his girl friend, Erica, Mark creates a network to vote for the hottest girl on the Harvard campus, which makes him notorious and gets him probation. The Winklevoss brothers contact him to build an online website exclusively for students of Harvard.
This sets Mark thinking and he hits on a better network than that, one which starts off at Harvard but soon spreads to Yale, Stanford and then moves on to the rest of the world. Mark also relies on finance from his friend, Eduardo Saverin, who is made the CFO of the project. Enter smooth talker, failed entrepreneur - Sean Parker(Justin Timberlake), who makes Mark move to California as well drop ‘The’ from ‘The Facebook’. Sean and Eduardo do not see eye-eye and that is when the fall out of Mark and Eduardo begins.
And I don’t think that this movie should be watched because we are riding high on the wave of ‘Facebook’, because even if eons from now Facebook falls off the face of the earth, you would still want to watch it because it is a story well narrated and is entirely strung by good dialogue just like ‘Before Sunrise’ !
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