Movie Review – “The Social Network”

There is no movie spoiler in this post.

I was excited to watch the so-called facebook movie, the biography of the awkward-genius-nerd Mark Zuckerberg. It also happened to be the first Netflix movie I chose, and I was pumped about that. And the quick one sentence review is: I highly suggest the movie, I'd describe it as a sort of human emotion thriller.

“The Social Network” is the story of facebook: how Mark conceives the idea with the help of friends and classmates, how he develops the idea from an Internet sensation into a multi-billion dollar company, and how the few relationships resembling actual friendships are buried in the process. It’s an exciting story of entrepreneurial success at its highest, but at the same time, it’s a human tragedy of the greatest scale.

I wanted to highlight one scene in particular that I really felt for, the scene that ends the movie. Mark is sitting by himself and taking in what facebook has done. In his cut-throat attempt to build facebook and get himself to the top, he ditched his only real friend, and the girl he worked so hard to impress by getting to the top.

I know that exact moment. When you’re sitting, maybe by yourself, and you're thinking, and it hits you: “Wow... It’s gone...” The last vivid time I felt that was the day after my roommate moved out last year, just before I graduated college.

Sidenote on my roommate, we had always been great track training partners, so we roomed together my senior year, and we were great roommates too. Especially that last semester of college we really bonded. We ended many a night sitting in our room downing beers, eating about a thousand calories in salt and pepper Cape Cod Chips, and going on and on about our stupid lives.

Anyways, a day after he had left, I was in the car with a few of my friends driving around. We were all kind of zoned out, and as I was staring off into Ohio farmland, it hit me in succession.

My roommate had moved out.

My friends were all leaving.

I was leaving Kenyon.

I might see my friends again, but that time was lost forever.

I knew moving to Portland meant leaving college, but I hadn’t internalized that those unique “college” experiences might be gone. Being sprawled out on my couch drunkenly chatting late in to the night and sharing a Papa John’s pizza with my friends, or catching an hour of shut eye on the biology department couch in a failed attempt to stay up all night finishing a paper.

Back to the movie, I think that’s the moment Mark was having. Thinking back to his time with his girlfriend Erica and best friend Eduardo; realizing in his vicious devotion to the mission of facebook, what he had lost; maybe wishing he could have another chance to be better to them, to appreciate them, to tell them how he felt about them. That moment, that feeling of, “Wow, it’s really gone,” it sucks.

That’s something I’m still internalizing. That life happens in seasons with a beginning and an end, and that life is about adapting to those new seasons – both sunny and rainy. Change is hard to swallow, but I guess that’s something “The Social Network” reminds us of. People may move in and out of your life, but at least you can still stalk them on facebook.

(facebook friends, be warned)

from ken

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