Last night Mr Barry Tuck and I had the privilege of being treated to a sneak preview of the much anticipated film, The Social Network. The film was shown at Gateway Ster-kinekor, so big thanks to the fine people there and Seth Rotherham from 2oceansvibe.com for the invite. I have been looking forward to seeing this film for a while as the story of Mark Zuckerberg, the world’s youngest billionaire, really intrigues me! You don’t go a day without reading or hearing news about Facebook, so I was super excited to see how Holllywood interpreted the making of this world-changing “dot com”. And I was not disappointed…
I won’t go in to a full blown synopsis, I don’t want to spoil it for the rest of you because you must go and see it. In short, the film is about all the key characters involved in the creation, launch and success of Facebook. We follow the law suits Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) is embroiled in whilst flashing back to his time at Harvard and the birth of what was then called thefacebook.com. The whole tone of the film is kind of humorous… not sure if it was meant to be but we sure found it funny! Justin Timberlake plays Sean Parker, and the co-founder of Napster is an interestingly shocking character to watch. However, the best characters to have a giggle at are the Winklevoss twins and their classic lines. Barry particularly liked this one… “I’m 6ft5, 220lbs and there’s two of me”. Go watch it and look out for more of the funny quips and remarks!
From the start Zuckerberg is portrayed as an awkward, angry, arrogant but exceptionally talented and intellectually gifted young man. The character of Mark that is created in the film is complex and thus alludes to many reasons why he developed the site. Whether he created the site to re-ignite his dwindling status at Harvard, stick his finger up at the man, show his ex-girlfriend he was not an “ar*%~8le” or just prove a site like Facebook could be built is left up to your interpretation. I feel that he basically wanted to put the college experience online and develop something really cool… if he created or did something cool he would be cool, basic laws of the school yard!
Mark Zukerberg isn’t portrayed particularly kindly in the film… may be it just goes to show that you still have to be a nice person to have friends! He may have created Facebook and have many billions of “friends” signed up to his website but what’s the point of that if you actually can’t go for a beer with one of them? There was also a “it’s lonely at the top” kind of message in the film and you do end up feeling a bit sad for the World’s youngest billionaire!
Final thought…. you must go see this, it is genuinely a great watch, very enjoyable and funny in parts. Also, interesting to learn the general history of this mega-site. Ok people, I’m now off to log in to the book and update my status, “Saw a preview for The Social Network last night… go watch go watch!”