The Social Network vs School Ties

The Social Network is being called “The Facebook movie”, but only by people who haven’t seen it. Once you’ve seen it, you’ll realize that the title has more than one meaning, and the dominant one lives in the non-internet world. You know, the one with trees and punctuation. There’s a movie like this every few years; a movie that comes out of nowhere and defined by not just the year of its setting, but also any given year you might watch it.  Just like Network always feels exactly like 1975 and whatever year I watch it, I’m betting The Social Network will always give viewers a simultaneous sense of 2003, 2010, and the creeping sensation of “Oh yeah, that’s how we got into this mess.”

Before we proceed: Do not, under any circumstances, tell me that the events of The Social Network didn’t happen. It’s a movie. Everything it says happened did, and I know because I saw it. I still have my ticket stub and everything. 

Mark Zuckerberg  (Jessie Eisenberg) won’t let his girlfriend (Rooney Mara) get a word in edgewise. He talks constantly, with no through-line she can detect, and when she questions him, he suggests she’s not following because she’s not Harvard material. She tells him to fuck off, brilliantly, specifically, and leaves him hanging. Mark barges straight back to his dorm room, gets drunk, and posts shit about her on his blog. Then, using his roommate Eduardo’s algorithm, he invents an online game for his classmates that is, essentially, Hot or Not, but exclusively for Harvard students.

Eventually, Mark is approached by the influential Winklevoss twins (Armie Hammer, who is one of the movie’s highlights in both acting and special effects.). They can get him the exclusive Final club membership he covets, and they want him to help create a social networking site for Harvard students. He does the idea one better, making it less about Harvard pride and more about making friends and keeping tabs on their relationship status. Oh, and he keeps it for himself. It’s important to remember that Friendster and Myspace already existed.

Mark’s website, then called The Facebook, catches on and grabs the attention of Sean Parker, the inventor of Napster, who is played by Justin Timberlake. If The Social Network is sort of a 2.0 Glengarry Glen Ross (and it kind of is), then Timberlake is Alec Baldwin. He explains the rules of life to Zuckerberg, then lives as if they don’t exist, because they don’t, which is one of the rules.  Parker lives the life of a rockstar, banging hot chicks, doing drugs, dodging lawsuits. Drinks on him. He approaches Zuckerberg and Eduardo and promises them billions. He makes good on that promise, and here we are, not even a decade later, all of us on Facebook: Harvard grads, people who’ve never even finished high school, your mom, your senator, little babies with shitty diapers, hots, nots, dogs, you name it. Friendster and Myspace may have gotten there first, but they didn’t do what Facebook has done. Friendster is The Midnight Special. Myspace is Night Tracks. Facebook is Mtv, new and old, perfect and horrible. The Social Network proves it, scene after scene, with such wit and ease (it’s somehow both grave and hilarious) that it’s the first screenplay since Pulp Fiction that I’d like to sit down and read like a novel.

Aaron Sorkin wrote The Social Network. Wrote it to death. Wrote it up and down the street. Wrote it to filth and then clean again. I’m pretty sure Aaron Sorkin and Mark Zuckerberg would hate each other (I’d hate them both), but there’s no demonizing of Zuckerberg in Sorkin’s script, not really. The Social Network jumps back and forth a few years, and from dorms to hearings, and from coast to coast, with wit, clarity and urgency. A sentence will be started by Zuckerberg in his dorm room, and then finished by a court stenographer years later.

The Social Network fits soundly into David Fincher’s filmography. There are parallels between The Social Network and Fight Club, for sure, but also common themes with Zodiac and The Game. There’s a constant butting of tradition against technology, youth against experience, sarcasm versus sincerity. It would be difficult to take a neutral position amongst a debate like this and not come off as bland. Fincher hasn’t sacrificed any of his vision or style; rather, I’d say he’s focused it. The Social Network isn’t as flashy as Fincher’s other work, but any extra cuts or flourishes might have distracted from the story, or worse yet, put some kind of badass Hollywood sheen on the events of Mark Zuckerberg’s sophomore year.

Sidebar: have you guys ever seen I Am Sam? The scenes with Sam and his daughter are all warm, sunny tones and traditional camerawork, while the scenes in the law firm are all washed in blue and silver, with quick-cuts and tilted angles, because it is scary, serious, modern business. A stupid director would have done that to The Social Network. David Fincher is not a stupid director (even if he did practically invent that style of filming.)

The casting and performances are spot-on. As Zuckerberg, Jessie Eisenberg has to be both the film’s hero and villain. Zuckerberg is oblivious to anyone’s feelings but his own, and most of those he doesn’t understand. But, he’s keen about the theories of social interaction, and knows when defying their expectations can work in his favor (so much of Zuckerberg’s idea of making social interactions work in his favor involve making other people look stupid). Zuckerberg—the movie character, not the real guy*--is an intellectual, only in that one very specific way, but it’s the way that makes people billionaires, so he gets away with being a non-stop jackass.

*Eh, probably the real guy too. Eisenberg does a great job playing him though. Andrew Garfield, as Eduardo, is the conscience of the piece. It’s a tough sell getting me to sympathize with a twentysomething who falls face first into millions of dollars over a knack for mathematics and hurt feelings, but Garfield did it. I know very little about the real Sean Parker, but Justin Timberlake’s portrayal of him as a charismatic, optimistic, douchebag, rockstar brainiac sparks up the movie every time he’s on screen. If Parker hadn’t introduced the ideas of fun and hedonism to Zuckerberg’s life, we’d all still be on Classmates.com.

I keep hearing that The Social Network is sexist. It’s true that there are few parts for females in the movie. I’m not sure if that was the case in the real story or not. Rashida Jones has a couple key scenes, most importantly near the end of the movie. Whether or not her character even exists in real life, she was welcome in the movie, serving as sort of a proxy for the audience, and getting in a couple sweet-natured digs that Zuckerberg both needs to hear, and probably doesn’t get. And as the girlfriend who kicks everything off, Rooney Mara is scathing and hilarious. The beginning of The Social Network plays like a short film, and the entire thing belongs to Mara. She shows up again, briefly, and makes equal impact. 

The Social Network, paired with another movie about the changing media and the way we live, like Network, Broadcast News, or The Insider, would make for a great night of film and discussion. Or you could watch it with something like Up in the Air or Sex Lies and Videotape, and debate whether technology unites or isolates us.

Or you could do what I did, and watch School Ties, and realize that it’s pretty much the same movie as The Social Network. An outsider longs to blend in and belong at his exclusive school. He’s honored for his achievements, then scorned for being an individual. There’s a hearing. There’s a bunch of young actors who ended up being more famous (which I think is going to the be the case with The Social Network). There are hardly any girls. The main differences are that School Ties isn’t based on fact, and it isn’t very good.

It’s the 1950s. Brendan Fraser is the new kid at an exclusive prep school. He’s Mark Zuckerberg, only instead of inventing and/or stealing Facebook, he’s secretly Jewish. His roommate is Chris O’Donnell, who, listen, nice guy and all, probably a  great dad, but: snooze. Always. He has the Eduardo/Andrew Garfield part. Matt Damon plays the Winklevoss twins as one guy, a cocky jock who leads the anti-Semitic smear against Fraser. The Rooney Mara role of the girlfriend who sets everything in motion is played by…you guys, I can’t tell you. She’s cute, but she’s so forgettable I had to look her up, and even then, my reaction was: Oh yeah, she exists. And then I forgot her again. It’s not her fault. It’s just a weird ‘90s thing. Cole Hauser, Ben Affleck and Anthony Rapp are the classmates. One of the characters is named Rip Van Kelt. The conflict of who invented Facebook is swapped out for: Fraser becomes a football star and another character is jealous, so Fraser is framed for cheating on an important test.

Spoiler: He didn’t do it. School Ties is a harmless, sweet movie with a Nice Message. It provides us with a glimpse back in time at a Matt Damon who was apparently always a sharp actor, and maybe should play more villains. It also shows us what a good director like David Fincher can do when the moral lines aren’t nearly as defined. A nice message is, well, nice, but Mark Zuckerberg, Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher could tell you: it doesn’t always get you where you need to go.

The Social Network: A

School Ties: C