The Social Network (2010)
Jesse Eisenberg stars in this real life story from director David Fincher that was nominated for 8 Oscars. A student at Harvard creates the worlds most popular stalking website and gets sued a bunch.
The genius of this film is clearly in it's execution, a film about a website and law suits does not jump out as the easiest topic for a film. Managing to create a film that is consistently entertaining and does not get lost in the dryness of the details is certainly an achievement. It really helps that the script retains a lot of humour and the main character has a strong personality to carry the various deposition scenes.
Where this film does fall down is in the murky world between fantasy and reality. We know this film is based on true events but it does appear to take a decent amount of liberties with actual events. John Ford was a proponent of “When the legend becomes fact print the legend” to mitigate for artistic licence but when you are the one having the first say then you do have some responsibility to the truth in my opinion. You can still make a good fictional tale with a basis in reality without having to pass off fantasy as reality, Citizen Kane (1941) is a prime example of this.
4/5
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