The Social Network: A Century Defining Film

The following are some short words I wrote about David Fincher’s masterpiece The Social Network for a class. Excited to see what the sequel has in store.

The world is moving at a completely insane pace. What was relevant an hour ago quickly becomes old news as quickly as a TikTok feed reloads. What this has led to is a revolution in the ways cities look, how our politicians talk, how our economy runs etc. Importantly for our case, this has challenged the relevancy of the artistic medium of film. Today the great auteurs almost completely ignore contemporary storylines which in turn stunts the growth of cinema while the rest of the world becomes more connected. There are of course a few outliers. The most important and interesting one being David Fincher’s The Social Network as it accurately depicts and represents how the 21st century was built and then sold. 

The word “accurately” is used loosely as the events in the film and the events in real life do not directly mirror each other but in the themes that permeate the film are the ills that plague modern life. Through almost mythic storytelling, Fincher asserts the magnitude of decisions made by mediocre men, and makes light of how their greed, insecurity, and dogmatic belief in efficiency has shaped the world that we live in today. It is important to remember just how relevant the events of the film were to the actual making of the film as there was only around a 4 year gap between them. Doing this allowed fincher to somewhat keep up with a constantly evolving technology landscape and also predict how it would affect the future. With its last frame Fincher makes his prediction.  The Beatles’s “Baby You're a Rich Man” plays as Mark reloads the facebook page of an old girlfriend: our lives will be condensed and consumed by a screen.