34 The Nation. October 25, 2010 striking for its rarity. Zuckerberg allows him- self only a couple of others throughout the course of the film, and one of those hardly . C counts, given that he delivers it as a drunken N I blog post, written after his girlfriend walks ROUP, ROUP, G out on him. The wonder of The Social Network ING is that Jesse Eisenberg, with his smooth and T melancholy Jewish face, gets you precisely ARKE M halfway onto Zuckerberg’s side. A specialist AR T in bright, vulnerable brooders with a bit of a mean streak (see The Squid and the Whale or Adventureland), Eisenberg plays Zuck- erberg as a genius-level wolf-boy: someone who is so smart that he feels entitled to say © 2010 COLUMBIA TRIS whatever’s on his mind, however brutal, and Jesse Eisenberg (left) and Justin Timberlake in The Social Network resents other people for resenting him for it. Abrasive in voice and manner, arrhythmic in gesture, humorless (though he doesn’t think Traps so), the character doesn’t bother to talk about by STUART KLAWANS his feelings because nobody’s worthy to hear about them, and besides, he’s really interested f the word “breathless” were still available, movie about the 20-year-olds who were only in behaviors. Meanwhile, behind the maybe David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin shipping out to Iraq and Afghanistan when actor’s deep-shadowed eyes, you sense an could have chosen it as the title of The Zuckerberg had his brainstorm, or can’t almost desperate sweetness. It’s Zuckerberg’s Social Network, their lightning-quick zig- find jobs today.) In fact, The Social Network fatal flaw that he would never let anyone see zag through the rise of Facebook and the doesn’t even tell you that much about social that part of himself, and Eisenberg’s triumph Idemise of all the nonvirtual relationships from networks. What it does go into, fictionally that he gets through the entire movie without which it sprang. Reviving the old Warner but with strong critical intelligence, is the once begging you to notice it. Bros. tradition of ripping films from today’s presumed difference between Zuckerberg’s As foils to this character, and rather sche- headlines—or, rather, carrying back into a attitudes and expectations and those of other matic contributors to the movie’s theme, big-studio production the headline-tearing people, members of his own generation quick-witted British actor Andrew Garfield methods that remain common in television, included, whose thinking was about five (as Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerberg’s original where Sorkin is their master—The Social Net- minutes behind his. I take this difference to business partner and sole friend at Harvard) work makes crackling, often hilarious drama be the real subject of the movie. If the word and the very large Armie Hammer (in a out of events that began in Mark Zuckerberg’s had not already been taken, maybe Fincher dual role as Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Harvard dorm room a mere seven years ago, and Sorkin could have called it Contempt. upperclassmen in all senses) briefly imag- reached a (very temporary) legal stopping This is a story that begins with a callous ine they have hired Zuckerberg to work for point in 2008 and were put into book form (as put-down, immediately escalates to public them. The first mistakenly thinks that well- Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires, cred- slurs (against one young woman at Boston formulated, carefully executed business plans ited as the screenplay’s source) only in 2009. University and every female undergrad at still lead to success (and can hold Zuckerberg’s You’d better not get self-indulgent if you Harvard) and reaches its thematic high point attention). The second foolishly believes that want to toss off a film this fast; and indeed, when a character proudly remarks that one scholar-athletes with old money naturally Fincher has directed The Social Network head- of his actions had not been a smart business have success coming to them (and can excite on, without fudging a single camera setup move but was a great way of saying “Fuck anything in Zuckerberg other than rancor). or wasting a single shot (except for putting you.” Formally, The Social Network makes its The only character to catch on to Zuckerberg, in one too many images of a caged hen— strongest statement through a densely layered and catch what passes for his loyalty, is an- and that doesn’t matter, since the chicken soundtrack in which the voices are often other online entreprovocateur: Sean Parker, is funny). You may judge the efficiency of thoroughly blended into the ambient noise: inventor of Napster, played brilliantly by a Fincher’s methods by that zigzag effect I an environment of omnidirectional chatter snaky yet sexless Justin Timberlake. mentioned. Although The Social Network is and continual buzz where you lean in to catch A movie about the least cool guy in the structured as a double flashback—scenes of one line of dialogue while the speakers are world who invents the next cool thing, the two different legal depositions in 2008 call up already racing into the next. Dramatically, guy who can’t accommodate himself to any memories of 2003–04—the to-and-fro seems though, the most lasting impression The So- group and so smashes all of them, The Social only to make the action accelerate. cial Network might leave is the image of its Network delivers a current-affairs jolt that’s The result is not a work of reliable re- fastest thinker and talker as he rouses himself been sorely lacking in the multiplexes. You portage (something that only a mug would from a seeming torpor to tongue-lash an at- know what it’s about even before you see it, have expected it to be); nor is it, as some torney three times his age. In return for a per- and you know why it’s relevant without being commentators are claiming, the story of a ceived condescension, Zuckerberg returns the told. But at the deepest level of its investiga- generation. (If the latter film is what you real thing, red-hot and self-righteous, while tion into Internet capitalism, portrayed here want, don’t go looking for it in the portrait scarcely looking at the object of his scorn. as a nonsystem with an aggravated ethos of an exemplary billionaire. Wait for the This act of self-revelation is all the more of creative destruction, The Social Network October 25, 2010 The Nation. 35 blurs recent history into contemporary myth. Ghetto. These pictures—about sixty minutes in the Nazis’ meticulous records of their What is its central figure, if not the Ivy of them, which serve as the core of Herson- propa ganda work. The reels disappeared until League fulfillment of Heath Ledger’s Joker ski’s documentary—were shot in the ghetto 1954, when archivists discovered them in the in The Dark Knight? Zuckerberg, too, could in May 1942, shortly before the beginning East German vaults. Subsequently, filmmak- say, from atop his pile of money, “I don’t make of the deportations to Treblinka, capturing ers began to use snippets of this semi-raw plans. I just—do things.” whatever was placed in front of the camera. footage to illustrate the misery of the ghetto. But because these scenes were planned and They did so, however, without commenting OVER THE PAST SUMMER , YAEL realized by the Nazis for their own purposes, on the source of the images or acknowledg- Hersonski’s A Film Unfinished began to play they are, in large measure, inventions. ing the existence of the strange, improbable theatrically across the country, bringing audi- Seemingly abandoned while still in rough scenes of Jewish luxury that alternated with ences the disquieting experience of viewing cut, with neither a soundtrack nor titles added, the pictures of utter wretchedness. authentically fabricated images of the Warsaw this dubious material was never accounted for This willfully naïve approach became less relatively small posts from Central Asia security are now synonymous, and victory is In Our Orbit to Southeastern Europe and the Horn of meaningless, Washington is a war capital, Africa that are “meant to encircle and nail and the United States a militarized country, down control of this vast set of interlocking even if it doesn’t look like it at home. “We Fair Warning regions.” The massive fortified embassies live in a world of American Newspeak,” he by FREDERICK DEKNATEL under construction in Baghdad and Islam- writes, “in which alternatives to a state of abad, home to more soldiers, spies and cost war are not only ever more unacceptable, he embarrassing percentage of Amer- overruns than diplomats, “will, assumedly, but even harder to imagine.” America has icans who believe Barack Obama is a anchor the U.S. presence in the Greater been without a decisive military victory since Muslim Manchurian candidate sent to Middle East.” World War II—Grenada, Panama and the impose Sharia—or is it socialism?— Engelhardt does not trace American 1991 Gulf War aside—but that is irrelevant. from sea to shining sea should take militarism solely to the “war on terror.” The reality, created in the cold war and ex- aT look at the Pentagon’s books. Earlier this With quick pace, he tells a history of fear ploited after 9/11, is an “ongoing war system year Obama, formerly the partial antiwar and triumph that followed Pearl Harbor [that] can’t absorb victory,” because victory candidate, sent Congress the largest defense and the atomic bombings of Japan, which is the end of military spending and rhetoric.