My wife and I only have free-to-air TV, which means I don’t waste as much time watching TV as when I was living in a shared house with a Foxtel connection.
Anyway, The Social Network was on the other night and, having read the script, I was pretty keen to see it.
The movie seemed to adhere closely to Aaron Sorkin’s script, which I had enjoyed. It’s quite long and ‘talky’ (161 pages), but it’s eminently readable.
One thing of particular note was how Sorkin got us on-board with the character of Mark Zuckerberg.
The movie opens with a scene involving Mark Zuckerberg and a young woman named Erica Albright. There’s some rat-a-tat dialogue which races from one topic to another but the end result is that Mark blows his chances with Erica.
She becomes the ‘one-that-got-away.’ And it’s Zuckerberg’s desire to reconnect with her that seems to drive the emotional heart of the movie.
We start with her. Part-way through Zuckerberg meets her again, with much the same result. And the movie finishes with him sending her a friend request. It creates empathy between audience and the character, and provides a way of tracking the emotional heart of the story.
I thought it was a great choice by Sorkin, as it helped make Zuckerberg a relatable sort of guy. I will never be a billionaire, I’m not a computer genius but I do know what it’s like to lose at love. Without that humanising touch, Zuckerberg would have been a remote protagonist I couldn’t have invested in (emotionally, not financially :).
The interaction between Zuckerberg and Erica also planted and paid off later with the Sean Parker character.
In the opening scene Zuckerberg tells Erica that,if she goes out with him, she’ll get into parties she otherwise wouldn’t have been able to attend. Needless to say, she doesn’t take this well.
Towards the end of the movie Sean Parker tells Zuckerberg that because he is hanging around, Zuckerberg will see women he otherwise wouldn’t. The repetition loads the phrase with meaning– in fact, this was one of the lines I was really watching out for when I watched the movie (the other line was Mark calling the Winklevoss twins the ‘Winklevi’ :).
I enjoyed both the script and movie versions of The Social Network, and I’m glad both versions received recognition at Oscar time a few years ago.