There is an important scene early in The Social Network, bass heavy dance music throbs as the screen cuts deftly between two symbolic set pieces. The first is typical montage material: the first party of the year at Harvard’s most prestigious clubs, a debaucherous scene of hedonistic excess. The second event, which is taking place simultaneously on the other side of campus, is less expected. Although the action is equally booze-fueled, the camera does not tighten on gyrating hips and upturned bottles, but on a computer screen. That’s right—this is a coding montage.
There’s a lot of humor in the way director David Fincher contrasts these two extremes of Harvard life in his latest film, but he isn’t just out for laughs. In this sequence, Fincher has laid out the tensions that play out over the rest of the film. Because as much as it’s a film about the birth of Facebook, The Social Network also a film about class and status and the lengths people will go to for acceptance. For example, when Facebook first starts gaining popularity, Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) refuses his business partner Eduardo Saverin’s (Andrew Garfield) urge to monetize it. Zuck doesn’t deny his partner as a savvy business move—he does it because, in that moment, Facebook is “cool.”
Today, we know Zuckerberg as an incredibly private billionaire responsible for changing the shape of the Internet and the concept of privacy as we know it. And thanks to his ugly legal entanglements with friends and classmates, it’s easy to imagine him as a villain. Fincher, however, takes a different perspective. While he hardly portrays Zuckerberg as an angel, he is anything but the ruthless tyrant we might imagine. He’s just petty, jealous, and a little to smart for his own good. Basically, he’s any college undergrad who gets in over his head.
The Social Network is a film about ambitions that dwarf compassion. It’s about a struggle to fit in. And ultimately, it’s a film about a smart kid who’s a bit of an asshole. But it’s a story told with so much honesty and consideration that when we see Zuckerberg, a kid in big boy clothes slouching at the deposition table, face to face with his best friend’s lawyers, we can’t help but feel a little bit sorry for him.
