Lately, I've been pretty depressed with movie news that I hear. Too many movies that are in development seem to be remakes or licenses of properties that were once popular and have a lot of nostalgia value (see: Transformers, G.I. Joe). Various kids cartoons are being adapted for the big screen into wholly brainless films (click on this at your own risk) and M. Night Shyamalan's list film was a live-action adaptation of the first season of an animated TV show. Now even board games are being adapted into films (I admit that Clue was a pretty great movie, but its more the exception to the rule that things without plots tend not to be good movies). So suffice it to say that I was not that excited when I heard that a "Facebook movie" was getting made. Then I saw this:I had forgotten that Facebook had been the subject of some interesting intellectual property battles. I am training to be an IP lawyer, so the trailer really got to me (copyrights are my preferred area, and I never thought I'd ever hear anyone refer to copyright infringement in such a fear-inducing tone), but even if I weren't, the promise of "corporate" espionage and backstabbing over what would become one of the most defining elements of the decade was enough to completely change my outlook on the film. The more I learned, the more interested I got, and when the overwhelmingly positive reviews began popping up, I remembered why one can't judge a movie's abstract premise (a "Facebook movie" can be so many things, so one cannot possibly judge it on that descriptor alone).
The Social Network succeeded on every level; the story was riveting (made more so by the fact that it is true, or at least Hollywood true), the directing and structure was very well done, and the cast was amazing (I never thought that I would ever be creeped out/terrified by Jesse Eisenberg or be forced to take Justin Timberlake seriously as an actor). The film told the story of how a man with few friends and no social skills became a billionaire for creating a social networking website in which users have turned the word "friend" into a verb to describe the act of "acquiring" "friends." Eisenberg played Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, as a cold, selfish, and emotionally stunted man who's contempt for everyone around him, even his friends, was a manifestation of his barely masked envy.
The film was done as a frame narrative, and is probably the only one that I can think of which had two frames. We see the events of the founding of Facebook and rise of Facebook, Inc. as visualizations of testimony given at two depositions for two separate lawsuits, both of which feature Zuckerberg as a defendant. In one, the plaintiffs were three of Zuckerberg's fellow Harvard students who had hired Zuckerberg to program a Harvard-only social networking site which may or may not have also been intended as a dating site. In the other, the plaintiff was Eduardo Saverin, the original CFO and co-founder of Facebook and, until Zuckerberg betrayed him, Zuckerberg's best friend. Throughout each deposition, Zuckerberg makes glib and insulting comments to the plaintiffs and their lawyers, believing (or at least convincing himself) that they are all just jealous of his intelligence, ingenuity, and success.
The Saverin suit is much more emotional, as the two parties were once good friends (although the film portrayed it in a fairly one-sided manner, with Saverin giving unconditional friendship to a man who tried to undercut Saverin's success due to the resulting envy) and it was clear that what Zuckerberg did was wrong and vile. In creating Facebook, Zuckerberg created the idea (potentially) and programmed the site while Saverin financed the project and acted as CFO and business manager. However, the two had a hard time agreeing on the direction of how the site would earn money. Eventually, they met Sean Parker, the unstable/slimy creator of Napster. Parker charmed Zuckerberg into bringing him into the company in a role that made Saverin redundant. Eventually, Zuckerberg and Parker forced Saverin out in an extremely cruel and sneaky manner (note to fellow law students/lawyers: did Saverin's comment about his belief that the Facebook lawyer was his lawyer, thus contributing to him not having the contracts reviewed by independent counsel make you think that the Facebook lawyer potentially violated his ethical duties?).
The other lawsuit was intriguing to me on a much different level. The three other students believed that Zuckerberg stole their intellectual property when he created a social networking site (that initially only allowed people with harvard.edu email addresses to join) after agreeing to build a Harvard-exclusive social networking site for them. As far as I can remember, the film never explicitly told us what laws the students sued under, but the students kept stating that Zuckerberg violated copyright law in stealing their idea. This intrigued me as a law student focused on copyrights and trademarks because ideas are not protected by copyrights, only expressions of ideas are (yes, I know, that is a little confusing; for this instance, all you need to know is that, until the students had a working social networking site, Zuckerberg could not be liable for using the idea of a Harvard-only networking site because (1) there are many ways to execute that idea, and (2) one group of people should not be able to hold a monopoly on an idea). Zuckerberg did have access to the students' computer code, which, if he used in building Facebook, WOULD be copyright infringement, because code is an expression of an idea, but Zuckerberg vehemently denied using any of their code. The students clearly could state that Zuckerberg violated an oral contract with them and caused them to detrimentally rely on further promises he made in emails to them, but the copyright claim is much more interesting because it is more ambiguous.
Anyway, sorry for boring you with all the law talk. Eisenberg showed a new side to his standard character (like Michael Cera, Jesse Eisenberg tends to play one sort of character; unlike Cera, Eisenberg's hasn't gotten tiresome yet) of awkward intellectual. His Zuckerberg was brimming with cruelty and contempt for everyone around him. His facial expressions alone were enough to make me cringe with discomfort, but when he opened his mouth to speak to people who were supposedly his friends (most notably Saverin and his girlfriend), everything that came out was extremely cruel and angry.
Finally, the movie also did a good job showing how this website has come to affect, and in many ways, dominate our lives, even as the main story of the film was not about the website, but the story behind the website. This ranged from some of Zuckerberg's inspirations for elements of the site (notably the conversation that was responsible for Relationship Status) to the effects of using "Facebook" and "friend" as verbs to describe using the site. The "You didn't update your relationship status" scene was a little over-the-top, partly because that scenario is mocked so often. But, sadly, it is mocked because people DO put a lot of stock into whether a relationship is "Facebook official." As I said earlier, the most significant shift in how we socialize made in the last decade was the work of someone who, according to this film, barely had 5 friends, let alone 500 million. Talk about irony.
Up next: In Baltimore, everything is connected...
P.S.
Seeing as how Facebook shows friends in common and used to have options related to friend degrees (friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends), I find a certain aspect of my viewing of the movie amusing. I saw it with three other people, one of whom attended Harvard at the same time as Zuckerberg and told us about the night he invented Facemash, a sort of precursor to Facebook. And all three of the people I saw it with know one of the people portrayed in the movie (for privacy purposes, I will not say who or how). Very interesting...
No comments:
Post a Comment