The Social Network

David Fincher, 2010

Eleven years after Fight Club blitzed American movie theaters, David Fincher directed another film about two men who found a radical organization, but are torn asunder when the enterprise takes on a life of its own. Which film was more ideologically potent? Project Mayhem could never exist in real life. Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin’s friends-club currently claims more than 1.35 billion active members. The Social Network is a confluence of so many elements going exhilaratingly right in perfect tandem. There’s hundred-take Fincher directing in full perfectionist mode; a towering script that deflates Aaron Sorkin’s signature histrionics until all that’s left is a bulletproof core; a host of fully realized performances, from one-scene-wonder Rooney Mara to double-dutied Armie Hammer to a too-cool-for-school Justin Timberlake, with Jesse Eisenberg’s nuanced, bitter nerd brooding above it all; even Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor’s sinister, sinuous score fits perfectly. It’s a morality play for the digital age, a geek tragedy without the divine comeuppance. It’s a slobs-vs.-snobs college movie. It’s the rare biopic that sympathizes with its subject, but never absolves him. It’s a crackling courtroom drama. It’s a work of entertainment that swings for the fences in its grand statements on the modern era, and clears it with yards to spare. Like the solitary piano-plinks within the misty strings on Ross and Reznor’s “Hand Covers Bruise,” a poignant irony hums at the center of The Social Network: Even as technological leaps appear to bring us all closer together, we feel more alone than ever. Several Facebook layout updates later, Zuckerberg’s screeds about keeping the site ad-free seem adorably dated. But with every passing year, the film’s understanding of its time and place seem savvier. —Charles Bramesco