Movie Review: The Social Network pt. 2

And as his actions continue, and the truth is unraveled (in a method explained in the essay for The Trial Of The Chicago 7), people distance themselves from Mark. In the last part of the movie, it’s seen as a woman working with Mark in the lawsuit against Eduardo declines his request to have dinner together. I pondered for a long time about this last conversation the two people have, and how it ends with Mark refreshing Erika’s Facebook page to check if she accepts his friend request. I’d come to think it wasn’t very important, until I saw a New York Times review about this movie.

Borrowing the content written there, because I fully agree with it, I realized that the movie ended with Mark constantly clicking the ‘refresh’ button, which also looks like a cycle, to inform that his actions will repeat themselves. While the woman advises Mark to settle his relationships with the people around him, and it ends with the audience believing that he will, in reality, he won’t, really. Like it had been in some part of the first half of the movie with Mark apologizing meaninglessly for the website he made by hacking Harvard’s website after all of the damage had been made, just so nothing bad comes upon him, the same thing was going to happen with the Winklevii, Eduardo, and Erika. Afterward, he was going to keep on trampling people in his way. I found the word ‘trample’, also borrowed from the review, perhaps the most appropriate word to describe this situation.

There were only a few reasons I gave this movie a 9/10 and not a full 10/10. One was because of the characters themselves. Because I’m a person who finds characters a very important part in making up a movie, but the main characters in this one weren't exactly likable, it didn’t come to the point where I felt emotionally attached to it. And perhaps, there was also the reason that I didn’t feel very impacted by the movie. Although I felt like this was a very well-made movie, I think it lacked heart and wasn’t exactly a film you would call ‘unforgettable’.

I think, to fully interpret this movie, I’d have to watch it multiple times. There were many key points that I felt were important and meaningful, yet didn’t give much thought to due to not being able to find the messages hidden in the scenes. Maybe, once I figured all of those scenes out, I’d think differently of the movie, but for now, I found its purpose to criticize an icon and his way of caring only about achieving his goal, and doing everything in his power to achieve that goal, no matter who around him it hurts.