Saturday, July 12, 2014

The Social Network (2010)

Director: David Fincher
Writers:   Aaron Sorkin, Ben Mezrich
Cast:       Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake

Film tells the story of creation of facebook as it is recounted during two lawsuits against Mark Zuckerberg, one by the Winklevi twins and the other by facebook's cofounder Eduardo Saverin.

When I saw it for the first time I was not using facebook and found the film to be great. You don't need to give a fuck about facebook to enjoy the film like is the case with Formula One and 'Senna'. The use of lawsuit to do the narration is extremely clever and they manage to make it very enjoyable even for people who are not clued upon internet start-ups, VCs and the importance of leaving monetizing late for such companies to succeed. Sean Parker's perfect analogies also helps. Jesse Eisenberg is perfect to play Mark Zuckerberg. Neither Zuckerberg nor any of the other facebook staff were involved during the production of the film but Saverin had cooperated for the Ben Mezrich book from which it is largely adapted. Fincher was also supposed to direct the Steve Jobs film but dropped out due to differences with Sony Entertainment. It is a shame because Jobs story had all the potential and the film that they finally ended up making looked disastrous based on the reviews.

I was searching for the spelling of Winklevi on Google and it turns out that the expression is in urban dictionary meaning coming second or not being quite good enough. Hehe. Also loved the Larry Summers  character portrayal and the stuff about him being a treasury secretary. Anyways the film is great even though it might be a bit Hollywodized, but who cares, it is the best film about silicon valley so far. HBO's TV series 'Silicon Valley' is also quite good.

Rating: 4/5

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