The Social Reckoning

 

Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong in “The Social Reckoning.” Columbia Pictures/Sony Releasing poster image via IMDb.com

He made presidential briefings and government policy discussions sound poetic in “The West Wing.” But trying to find any poetry in Silicon Valley jargon– or even make it vaguely comprehensible – is a whole lot harder, even for a screenwriter as talented as Aaron Sorkin.

The reason why is simple: Language is a human creation. High-tech is a human creation, too. But it’s antihuman as well. According to “The Social Reckoning,” it may be out to kill us … our spirits, at least, our kids’ self-esteem, and our capacity to think straight. Not to mention, our social institutions as collateral damage. 

All of this to make one very weird man with zero social skills or empathy but an off-the-charts IQ, even more obscenely wealthy than he already is.

This sounds like a horror show, but, sad to say, it’s a true story. Or at least it’s based on one.

The first time screenwriter Sorkin turned his attention to Mark Zuckerberg in 2010’s “The Social Network,” his subject was a brainy Harvard undergrad with a score to settle against all his tall, entitled WASPy classmates and the cute coeds who thought he was a dweeb. 

The product of his revenge was called Facebook. And the rest, as they say, was – or is – history. More like the collective nightmare we wish we could wake up from.

Checking in a decade and a half later, Mr. Z’s creation has become a Silicon Valley behemoth, an empire greater than most of the nations of the world put together.

Sorkin, who also directs this time, assumed his “Social Network” star Jesse Eisenberg would naturally love to reprise the character he nailed so perfectly the first time around. 

Fat chance. Eisenberg may be almost as intellectually brilliant as his subject, but he turns out to be a mensch, too. He was tired of strangers in airports confusing him with the real Zuckerberg, and assuming he must be a dick, too.

Luckily, the casting gods smiled on the project and provided Jeremy Strong to step into the role. Capturing Zuckerberg’s voice and broomstick-up-his-wazoo stiffness, Strong brings creepiness to the role, that still makes you shudder days after seeing the movie.

“Real Time’s” Bill Maher described a photo of all the tech gazillionaires surrounding our president following Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s recent trip to Washington, as a spectrum of guys on the spectrum. 

TV news brings nightly reminders of the depressing mindset produced by living in a corrupt dicktatorship led by Bozo the clown and some of the most socially inept Bros on the planet. But that’s not enough to hang a whole movie on.

And so Sorkin focuses on Frances Haugen, a Facebook project manager and Civic Integrity team member, whose whistleblower revelations provided the basis of Jeff Horowitz’s exposé of the way Facebook manipulates, demeans and radicalizes its users. His series won a Pulitzer Prize for The Wall Street Journal.

Luckily, Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White play the roles. Fresh from their respective Oscar and Emmy wins, the actors create great chemistry together, adding some much needed humanity, humor even, in Facebook’s otherwise barren desert.

Sadly their appeal can only go so far. 

Sorkin’s script dances back and forth on a timeline, which encompasses both the Covid pandemic and the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Facebook’s complicity in those events is scary, not to mention chilling.

In a Facebook command post surrounded by huge video screens, Zuckerberg sits mesmerized watching the bloody Jan. 6 events unfold. His stone-faced demeanor invites comparisons to an old man in Depends, transfixed by the TV screen he watches in the White House.

But the quick cut montage of riot images numbs rather than inflames emotions. Operatic violence onscreen dates back at least as far as “The Godfather.” We’ve seen it before. And the fact that voters elected to put the guy responsible back into office doesn’t doesn’t bode well for democracy’s future.

Despite the postscripts under “The Social Reckoning’s” closing credits about all the legal suits filed against Facebook following Haugen’s revelations, the consequences feel more brittle than hopeful. 

Sorkin’s idealism was better suited to a time when our social values were still in tact and robust. His lyrical, if slightly self-satisfied conscience is beginning to feel a little long in the tooth.

It’s not much fun being reminded that the testosterone-impaired geniuses who still wish they could have hung out with the cool jocks in high school are now running the show. This information doesn’t help us wake from the nightmare.

It does, however, provide something to think about the next time we push the Like button.