The Social Network

The greatest American film of the 21st century. Maybe because it styles itself like Citizen Kane. Maybe because it tells a story that the effects of still ripple in our lives today. Regardless, The Social Network is relentlessly watchable. Each scene as magnifying as the last. From the campus of Harvard to the suburbs of Palo Alto, the world the film builds is attractive, magnifying, and compelling. Yet, the film is about something smaller. The small thing that drives the protagonist to do everything they do. Like Orson Welles, David Fincher attempted to find Mark Zuckerberg's rosebud. It doesn't matter if Fincher was wrong or right. The story of describing all of someone's actions as an attempt to return to a state of prior happiness is a tale as old as time. It's something we all do.