The Social Network

How does one define success?  Is it an external influence, be it acceptance from peers, money, or power?  Or is it more of an internal state that requires a strong sense of self-awareness and satisfaction with one’s current station?  That question is the heart of The Social Network, the “Facebook movie” as it has unsatisfactorily been called.  Mark Zuckerberg, the real life creator of Facebook, is here represented in movie form by Jesse Eisenberg, and his success (or is it?) plays out on-screen.  To be honest, I don’t know how true to real events the film is.  After seeing the film twice though, I’ve come to realize; it doesn’t matter.  Director David Fincher (who has some other films you may have heard of, such as Zodiac, Se7en, and a little thing called Fight Club) didn’t set out to tell the true story of the founding of what is now one of the biggest companies in the world.  What he set out to do, and has amazing success at, is capture a moment in time when the rules changed.  The internet is responsible for a zillion things, but none more important than as a platform for social interaction.  How truthful the movie is in the details doesn’t matter because the larger picture is all that is needed;  Mark Zuckerberg became the youngest billionaire ever by bringing all the social aspects of the web to the mainstream.  That’s enough of a backdrop for a quality film.  In the hands of a director like Fincher however, a quality film elevates itself to the best movie of the year.