Movie Review: The Social Network

When this movie first came out I didn't have any intention of seeing it, mostly because I wasn't interested and partially because the majority of the people i saw trumpeting the movie were ones who liked Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and I didn't like that movie (ie, our tastes don't match so I probably won't like this one). But it came to school and I planned on seeing it there, until everyone else ended up being busy and it seemed to be ironic to see a movie called The Social Network by myself. So, eventually I got a copy from the library (and figured out how they organize their movies in the process!) and had a chance to form my own opinion on the movie.

The Social Network

Summary: Mark Zuckerburg is the kind of genius that can whip up a super popular website in a couple of hours while drunk. And after he does just that one night he gets noticed by some other people who need a coder to help them get their own website up and running. But Mark is a bit distracted and soon finds himself coming up with his own version of the website and getting in trouble with everyone in the process.

The Good: That was actually a really engrossing and interesting film, color me surprised in any case. It's more of a character study than anything else and the movie deftly balanced the characters grey and gray mortality. The characters actually felt like regular, flawed people and that's really hard to pull off. The movie never tried to make any of the characters be right or wrong in the arguments and settlements (and even acknowledges these questions towards the end) and I liked that a lot.

The Bad: I would love to know what really happened at the founding of facebook, I hate historical movies that aren't accurate and feel frustrated that I don't know if this was the true story or not. Other than that feeling of inadequacy on my part, found out via tvtropes that a white actor was cast for a non-white part partially because his skin tone was "ambiguous" and I really find that kind of stuff stupid. So maybe finding out the real story behind facebook would be a good idea after all...


The Music: Maybe it's because I'm a sucker for techno (properly mixed techno anyway) but I really enjoyed the music in this movie. Lots of techno and generally epic music that somehow managed to fit into the movie and I wouldn't mind checking out the soundtrack for this. I not only noticed the music (on a first watch!) but enjoyed it so yes, good music here.


The Visuals: Much like the music, I was surprised at how much I liked the look of this movie. There were a lot of long pan shots that would show the surround area, focus in on Mark and then keep moving with him. Usually a pan stops once it focuses in on the important character/object so I thought it was a really cool technique, I'll be keeping any eye out for other shows using it. I also really enjoyed the whole look to the movie. It's a little hard to describe but, it seemed like the lighting in the movie was pretty saturated yet was still dark and it just looked cool.


This is the kind of movie I'd actually recommend to a lot of people and plan on doing so. It's not action or mystery or any kind of movie I normally like but the story was well told, interesting, and made good use of it's visual medium. Don't think I'll be buying this on DVD but I'll probably rewatch it sometime and hopefully enjoy it just as much then.