A crackling whistleblower drama that exposes the algorithm-driven world of Facebook/Meta/Instagram in the way it harms countries, societies, communities and individuals struggling with dissent and dissent. Social calculation The author sees Aaron Sorkin return (this time with directing duties) to the ground he trod. Social network (2010).
When the darts land right, they hit their target with considerable force. When they don’t, this standalone follow-up, which rests largely on the shoulders of Jeremy Strong stepping in for Jesse Eisenberg in the Mark Zuckerberg role, is portrayed as a cold-hearted corporate scalawag chasing revenue, whatever the pursuit costs.
Social calculation marks a moment of reckoning for the writer-director. The question that has hung in the air ever since The Social Network gained near-universal acclaim a decade and a half ago is whose creative voice had more influence on how that film was made: Sorkin’s or director David Fincher’s?
The sequel, made without Fincher’s participation, comes close to providing a definitive answer. It’s not half the movie that was The Social Network. Sorkin’s fourth outing as a director has its share of moments but, taken as a whole, falls just shy of being a suitable companion piece.
Fleeting between 2019 and 2021, Social calculation It’s about a period in Facebook’s story that unfolded nearly two decades after the events covered by the social network. It is found to be weak in several important respects, not least of which is in avoiding the serious threats posed to democracy by the dominance of minds by the technocracy.
The film factors in the January 6 Capitol attack and inflammatory White House posts that fuel it but refrain from mentioning Trump or pointing out the serious negative effects of MAGA’s activities on American politics and society. It remains focused on the drama of a company dealing with allegations that it helped incite trouble by leading and manipulating users of its social media platforms.
But that doesn’t mean the script is completely wrong. Sorkin knows a thing or two about writing memorable scenes. There’s less of that than we were treated to in The Social Network, but that zippy screenwriter (who was in full flow at the Chicago 7 trial) still makes quite a few peeps. However, he is frustrated by director Sorkin and sometimes very clearly.
When the film flags, the two main actors, led by Mickey Madison as real-life Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen and Jeremy Allen White as a Wall Street Journal investigative reporter who wrote a series of stories with the help of the former’s leaks, step in to enliven the action, in part, at any rate.
Putting a dramatic spin on the events that led to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg testifying before a congressional committee, Sorkin resorts to his trademark rat-a-tat dialogue and smart verbal punch-ups to detail the story of profit-focused business tactics. To try to increase engagement at all costs.
Some of the texts are first class. Actors benefit from this. But some of it, especially when it tends toward the polemical pedantic, is very irregular, making Social calculation One of the rare Sorkin films that can take itself out of the Oscar race.
Social calculation follows two chronologically separated but parallel narrative strands that feed into and cross out of each other. Inside Dope centers on an honest data engineer and a courageous but tech-challenged newspaper journalist who is deeply disturbed by the social media platform’s apparent algorithms leading fans to misinformation, hatred and bigotry.
Another thread focuses on Zuckerberg’s preparations for the congressional hearings and the efforts of his team of media relations execs and image consultants to protect him from increasingly negative public scrutiny. MZ is portrayed as the bad guy to commit a murder from sowing the seeds of discontent and anger.
He was in The Social Network, not a fast-talking tech entrepreneur. Yeah, he’s not the main character here. His actions and statements are repeatedly called into question. He stands his ground but doesn’t make much headway as his technical, mean-spirited pleas fly in the face of reality.
A Sorkin film usually doesn’t, however Social calculation Withers under the weight of its vocabulary. The Social Network, too, was about people sitting in rooms and constantly talking about technical and business matters that ranged from the obscure to the impossible. However, the film did not fail to engross the audience Social calculation bows down
Without really hitting too many false notes, the film struggles to turn Facebook’s battle for credibility into an interesting affair. It sticks to the time frame of the plot – it includes the Covid-19 pandemic that threatens to delay, if not derail, Jeff Horwitz’s reporting – and does nothing to hint at the dire dangers that lie ahead in the years after the film is set.
Social calculation Well designed. It’s well acted, with many of the supporting cast giving high-quality performances. Leading the charge in this regard are Bill Burr as Charlie Garrigan, a former Facebook investor who strongly holds up a mirror to Zuckerberg, and Wunmi Mosaku as image consultant Raya Akinola, who works to get her boss out of a pickle.
Madison again proves her ability to inhabit complex characters and make them believable. White takes the unsavory means of resurrecting a man who is doing real print journalism that is now dead. Strong hits it out of the park with his sharp-angled interpretation of MZ.
The resolutely pensive quality of the performance, partly reminiscent of Kendall Roy and partly Roy Cohn, is perfectly appropriate, but the power it unleashes seeps into the rest of the film. It elevates the characterization but doesn’t do the film any favors as a whole.
Social calculation passable It could have been, no, should have been, much, much more.