Social network, The

Director David Fincher has often been nominated for major awards, notably for Zodiac and three movies starring Brad Pitt (Seven, Fight Club and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). The Social Network, the docu-dramatised tattle-tale of Facebook's founders and foes, could be the movie that finally earns him Hollywood's top accolades.

It'll gather other Oscar nominations too, for screenplay (Aaron Sorkin's adaptation of Ben Mezrich's reportage in The Accidental Billionaires), lead actor (Jesse Eisenberg as amoral Mark Zuckerberg, the nasty nerd who dreamed up Facebook) and supporting actors (Justin Timberlake and Andrew Garfield as contrasting semi-vile and semi-valiant Facebook co-founders). There should also be nods for cinematography and editing, and it must surely be a Best Picture nominee because this is a successful mainstream product with the rare quality of demanding audience attention and involvement.

Zuckerberg is depicted (brilliantly, by the screenplay and Eisenberg) as an Internet wizard with mental ailments, a socially inept and class-conscious Jewish undergard with chips on his shoulder and a personality that's close to autistic. His vicious streak and egocentricity seem part and parcel of the Facebook model. He gains the grudging sympathy of the audience partly because an even less admirable Internet entrepreneur is a dramatic figure of comparison. Amazingly, Sean Parker (the man who co-founded Napster) hasn't sued anyone, possibly because he considers Justin Timberlake's impersonation to be devilishly attractive, probably because he still owns a 7% chunk of $25-billion Facebook.

PR stories of Zuckerberg's acceptance of the book and the movie are also hard to believe, unless being a billionaire is also enough compensation for having one's unpleasantness spotlit in public. Eisenberg doesn't overplay Zuckerberg's pathological nature; this anti-hero isn't a Citizen Kane or Rain Man, he's a sad self-absorbed soul, a friendless "arsehole".

The sharply-honed screenplay begins boldly with a long, strained conversation in a crowded bar between the arrogantly egocentric Zuckerberg and the dismissive female fellow-student at Harvard who prompts the creation of Facebook. Difficult to see and hear, their exchange sets the tone of the movie brilliantly: Facebook, designed to be an exclusive dating service for Ivy League brats, became a platform for solitary Internet users to post self-serving news about themselves.

Sorkin's screenplay and Fincher's direction switch backwards and forwards constantly, highlighting Facebook's start-up, re-designs and exponential growth, focusing on the relationships and bitter law suits involving Zuckerberg and one of his Jewish roommates (Andrew Garfield as the Brazilian-born creator of the first key algorithm). The jigsaw plot also incorporates another suit brought by out-smarted site developers (privileged Harvard brothers and their ally), and the involvement of delusional, paranoid, drug-taking Sean Parker. None of them is an admirable character, least of all the former Harvard President Larry Summers. The least despicable person is the Jewish girl who sparked Zuckerberg's misogynistic brainwaves and she's the dramatic device providing the apt dramatic sting in the tail of an exceptional biopic.

Good movies need to be seen more than once, to answer questions they raised. Did the movie address the issue of personal privacy? Did it even acknowledge that Facebook's success depended on its ability to commandeer the names of every potential friend from the memory of a member's computer?