Miserable film – what twats. Why didn’t the Winklevosses or Savarin just walk away and have an ordinary life? And Harvard – what an obnoxious place. And the students – both sexes – how horrible are they, and how horrible the respective role each sex plays. But I guess that’s what the film wants me to think. What a sad world that makes rich young people so obsessed with money and status that they scratch, claw and chuck their dignity down the toilet.
Zuckerberg gets away with it by playing the nerd defence; his quick talking, funny stares and references to Turing get him big sympathy; and Shaun Parker’s cool, and right. But Savarin, the Winklevosses, and the guy played by Minghella (also Davos in Agora) are life’s losers. Despite the $65m settlement.
Refresh is the film’s Key Word: the last scene is Zuckerberg sitting Facebookzombie-style in front of his laptop, every few seconds refreshing his screen to see if his former girlfriend has agreed to his Friend request. (How many people have been there?) For that’s, according to the film, what it’s all been about: it starts with a painful rejection by his date Erica; Athene-and-Hera-like he stomps off to blog about her being a bitch, and writes a proto-Facebook site comparing girl students; at the height of his success she Didonically rejects even the opportunity of a few minutes’ closure; and at the end he’s trying again to (with apologies to Philip Larkin) refresh, refresh, refresh. All this around the law-plot’s centrepiece – the millionth-member party where Savarin realises he’s been screwed. And how do they know when to stay the party? Refresh, refresh.