The social network

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Movie
German title The social network
Original title The social network
The social network.svg
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2010
length 121 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 12
Rod
Director David Fincher
script Aaron Sorkin
production Dana Brunetti ,
Ceán Chaffin ,
Michael de Luca ,
Scott Rudin
music Trent Reznor ,
Atticus Ross
camera Jeff Cronenweth
cut Kirk Baxter ,
Angus Wall
occupation

The Social Network is an American film drama from 2010 by director David Fincher , which the history of the social network Facebook addressed. The screenplay was written by Aaron Sorkin and is based on the book Billionaire by Chance: The Founding of Facebook - A Story About Sex, Money, Friendship, and Cheating by Ben Mezrich . Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg did not directly influence the film adaptation.

The film premiered on September 24, 2010 at the New York Film Festival and the German version was shown on October 7 in Germany and Switzerland and on October 8, 2010 in Austria .

The factual fidelity of the film is highly controversial.

action

After his girlfriend Erica Albright left him because he was “just an asshole”, the US student Mark Zuckerberg developed the idea for a website called FaceMash in 2003 , on which users can see pictures of two women at a click of the mouse compare and evaluate their attractiveness. His best friend and fellow student Eduardo Saverin provided him with the algorithm for comparing images . To get the relevant images for the website , Zuckerberg hacked into the databases of all dormitories at Harvard University , stole digital photos of the students from the faculties' online yearbooks and put the images online. At the same time, the outsider, decried as a nerd, posts condescending comments about his ex-girlfriend on his blog. Meanwhile, FaceMash is spreading rapidly among the university students, and within a very short time the traffic brings the servers to the limit of their capabilities. The university interrupts the connection to the server and Zuckerberg has to answer for the incident before a committee of the university. As a punishment, he was given a six-month probationary period. Erica Albright turns completely away from Zuckerberg, shocked by his tasteless blog posts.

The reports on the website and its overwhelming success draw the attention of Harvard-studying twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their fellow students Divya Narendra to Zuckerberg. They discuss with him their idea for an elitist social network that should only be available to fellow students at Harvard University. Zuckerberg agrees to support the three, but can only be reached sporadically for several weeks.

During this time he works on his own website which he calls thefacebook.com . Meanwhile Eduardo Saverin tries to become a member of "The Phoenix Club", an association of Harvard students. Saverin brought in the necessary capital in the early days of thefacebook and later became Chief Financial Officer . In addition, Zuckerberg is supported by Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes .

Zuckerberg realizes that people want to find out what their friends are up to through the Internet. Therefore, the basic idea of ​​the website is to put all of the college students' social experiences online and to make these functions available to users of his website. The founders were overwhelmed by the unexpected success. Thefacebook quickly grows beyond campus and country borders. Zuckerberg meets with Sean Parker , the former co-founder of the Napster music exchange . He becomes Zuckerberg's mentor and suggests, among other things, that the the in the domain name be removed. From now on known as Facebook , the website is no longer about a “communication revolution” at the university, but about a lot of money. Parker says, “A million dollars isn't cool. Do you know what's cool? One billion! ”He establishes contact with the venture capitalist Peter Thiel , who financially supports Facebook with a substantial sum. Meanwhile, Saverin is forced out of the company. In contrast to all other founders, the capital increase significantly reduced his stake after he had Facebook's bank account frozen in a dispute and thus jeopardized its existence. Shortly thereafter, Sean Parker is caught with drugs at a party, whereupon Zuckerberg tells him that this will make headlines and therefore have consequences.

Saverin then sued Zuckerberg. The Winklevoss twins and Narendra are also taking legal action against Zuckerberg, whom they accuse of theft of intellectual property . The negotiations with the two parties form the framework for the plot, which in retrospect tells the story of how Facebook came about.

In the end, a young lawyer informs Zuckerberg that they will seek a settlement with Saverin. She tells Zuckerberg that he will never win before a jury because it is easy to present him as unsympathetic in front of the jury . Before leaving the room, she tells Zuckerberg that he's not an asshole, but that he tries hard to be one.

Zuckerberg sits alone in the room and thinks about what the lawyer said. Then he sends a friend request to his ex-girlfriend via Facebook. He waits in front of the screen and reloads the page every few seconds to check whether it has already accepted it.

Saverin later receives a severance payment of an unknown amount, the severance payment for the Winklevoss twins is estimated at 65 million dollars in the credits. Zuckerberg became the youngest billionaire in the world through the success of Facebook, according to the film . In 2010, Facebook had a market value of up to $ 25 billion by some estimates.

Background information

  • The budget of the film was 40 to 50 million US dollars .
  • The Belgian girls' choir Scala supports the trailer for the film with the Radiohead title Creep . The motto “You can't have 500 million friends without making a few enemies” alludes to the number of Facebook users at the time - who connect as “friends” - as well as to broken friendships that Zuckerberg left behind and some of which ended up in court.
  • The algorithm used by Eduardo Saverin to evaluate the women in Facemash is an adaptation of the Elo rating system developed by Arpad Elo in the 1960s .

criticism

The film received positive reviews. According to Rotten Tomatoes , 96 percent of all critics rated the film positively, based on 224 reviews with an average score of 9.0 out of 10.

The critic Steven Jay Schneider writes in his review that, considering the membership numbers, it is no wonder that the film was successful. He finds it “surprising” that the film is good. He describes the script as "brutally comical", which makes it clear how much narcissism and obsession with the reputation of the users of Facebook are. In particular, he emphasizes the achievements of the actors. Eisenberg acts “excellently”, Garfield portrays his character with “heartbreaking vulnerability” and Justin Timberlake embodies “skillfully” the arrogance of his character. He sees the film, which he sees as being "visually impressive", as an endless debate about who has done what and who is in whose debt.

Factual fidelity of the film

Some critics complained that the fictionality of the plot was not made clear enough. According to David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World. , the film is about 40% true. Even the derogatory and sarcastic behavior (“… snide and sarcastic in a cruel way…”), in which Jesse Eisenberg plays the Facebook founder, does not correspond to the facts. According to Kirkpatrick, he was a very self-confident and convinced person (“… unbelievably confident and secure.”).

Many of the processes depicted actually happened that way, but others were also depicted distorted and the general impression left by the film was wrong ("A lot of the factual incidents are accurate, but many are distorted and the overall impression is false." ).

The main source for the book author Ben Mezrich was Eduardo Saverin , who was available to the author as an advisor during the legal dispute and even before the agreement with Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg himself refused to cooperate with the makers of the film, did not attend the premiere and distanced himself. The film distributor Sony was not allowed to place an advertising page on Facebook. Zuckerberg said in a television interview that while the movie was fun, his life wasn't that dramatic. The film is fiction, Zuckerberg himself wants to use Facebook to make the world a more open place. Instead, the film suggests that it set up the network to make it easier to get to know women.

Facebook itself also called the film a fiction:

“The movie might be a sign that Facebook has become meaningful to people - even if the movie is fiction. What the movie may or may not contain is not what we're focused on. What matters more is building a useful, innovative service that people enjoy using to connect and share. "

“The film could be a sign that Facebook has become meaningful to a lot of people - even if the film is fictitious. We're not focusing on what the film is or isn't in. What matters more to us is to build a useful, innovative service that people like to use to connect and exchange ideas. "

Cameron Winklevoss, however, defended the filmmakers and described the plot as not fictional, Fincher and Sorkin would have presented the facts correctly ("The film is nonfiction. I think David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin did a great job getting their facts right.").

The screenwriter Aaron Sorkin described the film as a work of art, it was not a factual documentary ("This isn't a documentary. Art isn't about what happened."). Director David Fincher made it clear that he did not want to make Zuckerberg bad with the film (“It's not my intention to crucify Mark Zuckerberg.”). Zuckerberg achieved a lot at a young age (“Mark Zuckerberg is a guy who accomplished an enormous amount at a very, very young age.”).

Sean Parker described The Social Network as a completely fictional story (“a complete work of fiction”).

Awards

The Social Network dominated the American film awards season and has won film and directing awards from the National Board of Review , Boston Society of Film Critics , Los Angeles Film Critics Association , National Society of Film Critics , Broadcast Film Critics Association, and the New , among others York Film Critics Circle Award. Leading actor Jesse Eisenberg (National Board of Review Award, Boston Society of Film Critics Award, National Society of Film Critics Award) and the screenplay by Aaron Sorkin (National Board of Review Award, Boston Society of Film Critics Award, Los Angeles Film) also received awards Critics Association Award, National Society of Film Critics, Broadcast Film Critics Association Award, Writers Guild of America Award 2011).

At the 68th Golden Globe Awards on January 16, 2011, the film won awards in the categories of best film drama, best director, best screenplay and best film music. Jesse Eisenberg was nominated for Best Drama Leading Actor and Andrew Garfield for Best Supporting Actor. At the British Academy Film Awards , The Social Network received awards for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Editing. Further awards followed at the 2011 Academy Awards in the categories of Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Music and Best Editing. The Social Network received nominations in the categories of Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor - Jesse Eisenberg, Best Cinematography and Best Sound.

In the Evening Standard British Film Awards was Andrew Garfield won for best actor and the 31 London Film Critics' Circle Film Award in 2011 , there were awards in the categories Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay.

In 2016, The Social Network ranked 27th in a BBC survey of the 100 most important films of the 21st century .

literature

  • Ben Mezrich: The founding of Facebook. riva, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-86883-154-2 . (The English original edition of 2009 The Accidental Billionaires was the template for the film)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for The Social Network . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , October 2010 (PDF; test number: 124 614 K).
  2. Age rating for The Social Network . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ^ Mark Harris: Inventing Facebook. New York Magazine, September 17, 2010, accessed October 18, 2010 .
  4. ^ Starting dates for The Social Network (2010). IMDb , accessed October 18, 2010 .
  5. a b c d e Finlo Rohrer: Is the Facebook movie the truth about Mark Zuckerberg? BBC , September 30, 2010, accessed October 18, 2010 .
  6. ^ The Social Network (2010). Box Office Mojo, accessed March 15, 2011 .
  7. ^ The Social Network (2010). The Movie Insider, accessed March 15, 2011 .
  8. Film epic on Facebook: No sweet sugar mountain. Der Standard , September 27, 2010, accessed October 18, 2010 .
  9. ^ Schneider, Steven Jay: The Social Network (2010) . In: Schneider, Steven Jay, Ueberle-Pfaff, Maja (ed.): 1001 films that you should see before life is over. Selected and presented by 77 international film critics. Twelfth, updated new edition. Edition Olms, Oetwil am See 2017, ISBN 978-3-283-01243-4 , p. 915 .
  10. ^ Henning Steier: Mark Zuckerberg is a hypocrite. 20 minutes , September 8, 2010, accessed October 18, 2010 .
  11. ^ Sebastian Moll: Film: Facebook á la Hamlet. Frankfurter Rundschau , September 27, 2010, accessed on October 18, 2010 .
  12. a b c d Amy Lee: 'The Social Network': Fact Or Fiction? Uinterview, October 1, 2010, accessed on October 18, 2010 .
  13. ^ Mike Butcher: Sean Parker calls The Social Network “a complete work of fiction”. TechCrunch Europe, January 23, 2011, accessed January 24, 2011 .
  14. cf. Knegt, Peter: Tracking The Oscar Precursors: A Complete Guide To Award Season at indiewire.com (accessed January 9, 2011)