The Social Network
David Fincher directs this supposedly true-to-life story of a teenager whose rise to fame and fortune lead inevitably to painful legal action from jealous colleagues from his past. The film is told almost completely in flashback mode, supporting and reinforcing the idea that these stories they tell are all true. Repeated references to the character being under oath to tell the truth draw us in, force us to empathize not only with the characters, but the real people they represent. We are completely drawn into their lives, into the hardships of rich Harvard students only looking to make their name in the world, with only their ideas and world-class talents to guide them, how can we not feel the desperation of those who make only a million dollars? A million dollars simply isn’t cool anymore, the jet-setting founder of Napster tells us. How hard it must be to be only an Olympic athlete from an extremely wealthy family who somehow managed to accomplish all he did while living with split-personality disorder (played expertly by baking soda heir and soap-opera actor Armand Hammer). Even though zombie-plague survivor Jesse Eisenberg received top billing, one should at least credit Hammer for mastering the ancient art of bi-location to film the scenes of the mentally dichotomous rower.
But I digress. This film isn’t actually about the hardships of the rich, though they play a large part in the telling. This movie is about the search for truth, the quest for certainty. This goes back further than 2003, of course, back to the early enlightenment, the dawn of science, to the early European philosophers who asked themselves: how can we know what is real, what is true?
We can ask the participants, make them take oaths, cross-check their stories, compile them, line by line, remove any obvious inconsistencies, and once we run through all these events, what we must have will be only the truth. So the process goes. However, what we are left with here is a story of a group of fantastically successful people, billionaires (and this is how we know they are cool), the best of the best, Harvard students, geniuses, Olympic athletes, some who have overcome mental disorders that would cripple lesser beings, all of whom, in the relentless search for truth are found to be empty, hollow, emotionally absent man-children, unable to return friendship, incapable of meaningful interaction with women, and motivated almost exclusively by sexual greed. The sense of shock is palpable. The curtain has been drawn back from Harvard revealing it to be a place of depravity and greed, driven by drunken misogyny. One can understand how, if this is all true, famous gangtsa rapper and Harvard graduate Natalie Portman came into her deep-seated rage toward all patriarchal establishments.
Then comes the twist, one of the legal assistants who’s been taking notes quietly while the Harvard men dragged each other through the filth for the past two hours, confides to Eisenberg, that he is most likely not an asshole. Again, jaw-dropping shock from the audience. Because testimony of the type we’ve been watching is, in her own admission, 85% exaggeration, 15% perjury. That actress there is Rishida Jones, also a Harvard grad, delivering the most important line of the film. What we’ve been watching, what we’ve been so enthralled by could very well be a lie. The wool was pulled so low over our eyes we believed the wool itself to be the truth! So, once again we are faced with the dilemma great minds like Hume and Kant made their careers upon: How can we possibly know what is true? But then, if Harvard isn’t such a den of sin, why is famous gangsta rapper Natalie Portman so angry?
I’m posting this on facebook. Five Stars.