What I find so particularly intriguing about Fincher's film isn't the detailed outline of the founding of Facebook as a business entity (brilliantly scripted by The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin), or even the supposed checkered past of the social networking website (the movie asserts that not only was the website spawned from a drunken act of misogyny, but also that the basic framework of the site was a stolen idea). What intrigues me most about The Social Network is its commentary on the nature of genius, and how that genius comes both as an asset and a crippling handicap.
The character of Mark Zuckerberg, played to perfection by Jesse Eisenberg, is one of the most intriguing movie anti-heroes in recent memory, and the more I dwell on him, the more I feel inclined to include him with Travis Bickle, Daniel Plainview, and Charles Foster Kane on the list of all-time great subjects of brilliant character pieces in film. Although the character Mark Zuckerberg probably bears little resemblance to the real Mark Zuckerberg, the character himself is far more interesting and fertile for analysis. Many will probably see The Social Network more as a social commentary or a sort of pseudo-historical film rather than a character piece. The film is all of these things, but its greatest strength lies in the character of Mark and the double-edged sword of his genius.
Although the film makes no attempt to make Mark seem likable or relatable, there is no question about the fact that the film certainly regards him as a genius. We see his natural inclination to computer programming, and it becomes clear that although he is not the most well-known or well-loved on the Harvard campus, his technical wizardry is unparalleled. Mark things and breathes in code. When he his dumped by his girlfriend, his retaliation doesn't come in words or physical actions, but in HTML.
However, the careful viewer will see that, in order for Mark to gain this upper hand in his mental capacity for programming, he also has to lose something. Mark's superior understanding of computer language comes at the cost of his ability to connect with anyone on a human level. His obsession with computer coding, and eventually with Facebook, send him into a sort of mental tunnel vision that make him cold towards other people, unable to relate or empathize with anyone else. The film is rife with examples of this: the first thing we see is Mark being dumped by his girlfriend, and we can hardly blame her. His prickish and insensitive personality is apparent from his first lines. Throughout the movie, Mark betrays and manipulates business partners, friends, and allies left and right, but he doesn't seem to do these things out of mean spirit or even selfishness. On the contrary, when Mark is confronted by those he has wronged, he usually seems unable to understand why they are angry with him.
Mark's shortcoming comes from this inability to understand other people; in order to understand computer language so thoroughly, his understanding of humanity is sacrificed. This is evident not just in his interpersonal relationships, but in his social relationships as a whole. Mark desperately wants to be accepted into one of the Harvard final clubs or fraternities, but despite his intelligence, he remains a nobody. His failure to do so manifests itself as a deep resentment of the system that rejected him. His creation of Facebook, and the many "fuck yous" he throws out along the way, seem to be retaliation towards the entire social world that has rejected him. However, his longing to join this world persists despite his projected hatred; when his best friend Eduardo is accepted to an exclusive final club, Mark's jealousy is clear. When Eduardo claims that Mark betrayed him just to get back at him for making it into the final club, there isn't much to make the audience think that this isn't the case.
The film doesn't even seem to regard Mark as entirely human; we see many times throughout the film that he seems to be impervious to the cold, and when other characters are painfully freezing, he doesn't even seem to notice the temperature. He walks through thick snow in casual clothing and doesn't seem to notice. He rejects food every time he is offered it, and we almost never see him eating, save for at the end of the film when we see a sliver of humanity peak through as he connects with a young law intern played by the always wonderful Rashida Jones. The things that most people are sensitive to, Mark is unable to recognize, and these physical oddities serve to symbolize his emotional ones.
And therein lies the brilliance of The Social Network's depiction of the dual nature of genius. Mark longs to become a part of the social in-crowd, but despite all his success, never succeeds in doing so, not because he won't, but because he can't. The handicap of his genius, despite opening seemingly infinite doors for him, will never open the only door he wants to go through. The financial and commercial successes he achieves do not satisfy his loneliness, as we see at the end of the film as he gazes longingly at his ex's Facebook profile. He wants nothing more than to be accepted, and when he finds he is incapable of achieving this, he strikes back with a relentless ambition that drives him to zealotry and near madness.
We see how the other characters fall victim to emotional plights as they climb the ladder of success. Eduardo is torn apart by his rocky relationships with his best friend and insane girlfriend, and Sean Parker (in a surprisingly effective performance by Justin Timberlake) spirals into a lifestyle of sex and drug abuse, but Mark never falls victim to the vices of their world, because he can never be a part of it.
In his review of The Social Network, Roger Ebert wisely compares the character of Mark Zuckerberg to the real life figure of Bobby Fischer. Their similarities are uncanny: Fischer, a childhood chess prodigy who was arguably the greatest player that ever lived, found himself a victim of his own inability to apply to human connection the same virtuosic touch he applied to the game of chess. Fischer became increasingly bizarre, openly speaking about his belief in conspiracy theories that the Jewish people were a secret evil organization that controlled the world (Fischer was himself Jewish), and he died an exile in Scandinavia, a sad genius ignored by his home country as a shadow of what he once was. His brilliance gave way to an arrogance that was both his greatest success and his undoing, much like Mark Zuckerberg.
It is sometimes theorized that genius itself is not an increased mental capacity in an individual, but rather a slightly skewed perspective from which the subject views the world. This is certainly the case with Mark Zuckerberg, who is able to see the world through the eyes of a computer but not through the eyes of a human being. It is in the exploration of Mark's genius that the film finds its own genius.
