The Social Network

I have now seen this film three times. It is also my favorite films of 2010.
This film is highly stylized and beautifully shot. The editing and music in the background are flawless. However, the plot is quite complicated but fantastically done. The film begins (this also happens to be one of my favorite scenes from the film) with Mark Zuckerberg (an Oscar nominated Jesse Eisenberg) at a bar with this girl whom he's been seeing, Erica (Rooney Mara), a fictional character created solely for the film. They are exchanging rapid fire dialogue with Mark trying, badly to show Erica how smart he is. At the end, she shuts him down by breaking up with him and saying that the reason why girls won't date him is not because he's a nerd, "from the bottom of my heart, that's not true. It's because you're an asshole." And with that, Mark returns to his dorm, angry and desperate to do something. So over the course of one night, he hacks into the pages of other houses and copies the photographs of girls onto his website which pits two against one another, with the viewer picking the prettier of the two. And, of course, he blogs the whole time. Needless to say, the website breaks several laws and is completely unethical, but it is also extremely popular, so popular in fact, that it crashes Harvard's internet. Mark receives six months academic probation for this stunt. However, this stunt also catches the attention of the great, perfect Winklevoss twins: Cameron and Tyler (Armie Hammer and body doubling by Josh Pence). They recruit Mark to create a page where people at Harvard can find out information about other people. Yet, Mark takes this idea and puts his own twist. He creates it himself, after borrowing money from his only friend, the economic major Eduardo Saverin (a great Andrew). He launches the idea after deciding to add relationship status and interested in, after all, that is what drives college, who is dating who. It is launched and becomes quite popular, but the Winklevoss twins are furious, and call it intellectual theft, which it basically is. Still, a cease and desist letter does nothing to stop Mark, and he quickly expands the website, called The Facebook. Here, once it arrives at Stanford (in California) it catches the attention of the entrepeneur Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) who founded Nabster. On spring break, Eduardo tries to get some businessmen interested in the project so the website can finally make some money. Mark shows absolutely no interest in this and is quite rude to many of these people. But then, he, Eduardo and Eduardo's girlfriend at the time, Christy (Brenda Song) meet up with Sean Parker and Mark becomes completely starstruck. Everything Sean says is great and this guy can do no wrong (he also makes the biggest difference in the business, telling Mark to eliminate the 'the' in the title). Eduardo does not feel the same way; in fact, he believes that Sean is a paranoid big shot with a cloudy personal life. Both of these opinions are valid. Needless to say, Mark decides to go out to California for the summer, just as Sean suggested. After Eduardo opens up his checkbook some more, Mark hires some interns and they journey out to California. This is when things truly change and not for the better. Soon, Sean is living with Mark and the interns and Eduardo discovers this and is furious. He freezes the account he set-up for Mark and flies back home where he breaks up with the crazy Christy who burns the silk scarf he just bought her. Mark calls Eduardo and tells him to fly back out there because there is some paperwork he needs to sign as Sean set them up with a businessman who will give them money and an office to work in. Eduardo even admits that it was stupid that he didn't have a lawyer look over the paperwork. His share of the business is increased to 33%. Then we flash forward to later that year, when Facebook is about to hit one million users. But Eduardo learns that his share of the company has lessened drastically; he now only owns 0.03 % of the company and he was the co-founder. Naturally he completely freaks out. He informs Mark that he needs to lawyer up because he is coming after the whole business. Mark does not defend himself though Sean attacks him. Eduardo leaves. Mark tells Sean that he shouldn't have been that mean. Later, Sean has a party to celebrate but the police come and he (and others) get arrested. Mark, however, stayed behind to catch-up on some work at the office. Was he the one who called the cops? Of course not, but as one of his lawyers Marilyn (Rashida Jones) says all the jury needs is the possibility that he he did. Marilyn also informs Mark that his lawyers will settle, because there will be no case he stands a chance of winning the case if it is taken to a jury which is probably correct.
The film combines both lawsuits Mark faces: one from the Winklevoss twins and their friend Divya Narenda (Max Minghella) for intellectual theft while the other is against his former best friend Eduardo over his stock in the company being drastically reduced. Yet, the film works flawlessly, with snappy dialogue. The customers fit each character perfectly with Eduardo always dressing professionally while Mark wears flip flops to his hearings. Throughout the whole film, jealousy between the two friends as Eduardo gets into an exclusive club while Mark is left out. There is also an interesting scene involving a chicken, which Eduardo must take everywhere even the dining hall. While at the dining hall, Eduardo decides its a lovely idea to feed the chicken some chicken. You would think a guy going to Harvard would know not to feed a chicken chicken. Still, it was some necessary humor.
This film deserved every award bestowed upon it, though I am still upset that Andrew Garfield was snubbed, but he faced stiff competition from two of his own co-stars: Justin Timberlake and Armie Hammer. This film helped the careers of all involved as it should have.
Yet, I do have problems with the film, as the women (the majority of them, with the strong exception of Erica) are nothing more than objects used for sex and Christy is the stock character of the crazy girlfriend. Nevertheless the Grade for this film is an A.