Sans David Fincher, Jesse Eisenberg and Trent Reznor with Atticus Ross, Aaron Sorkin takes it upon himself to return to the world of Mark Zuckerberg, this time focusing on The Washington Post’s investigation into Facebook’s culpability in radicalising its users to the far right. You’d think the mistake was in Sorkin failing to reach Fincher’s ankles as a director. The surprise is how inane his script ends up being.
Big shoes to fill, Aaron. I happen to think 2010’s The Social Network is a modern American classic. It came at the right time when we were still unpacking the shortcomings of social media. It was by a screenwriter, Sorkin, on top of his game, after conquering the world of television with The West Wing, and David Fincher, an immensely talented filmmaker, finding his maturity. It introduced the world to the composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, previously known for their work as members of the industrial metal outfit Nine Inch Nails.
It had style and swag. It paced itself so thoroughly, like Sorkin’s words were an instrument, and the actors were opera singers, meticulously keeping their performance to the mathematical flow of the music. The screenplay was what the film was remembered for. Sorkin would end up winning an Academy Award, namedropping Paddy Chayefsky in his speech, the screenwriter of another award-winning film with Network in the title. After watching The Social Reckoning, we didn’t give Fincher enough credit for his work.
Less Network this time, and more All The President’s Men, The Social Reckoning starts with a pure moment of social media ecstasy. A woman, white, blonde and drunk, next to an overheated car, is approached by two police officers who happen to be black and Latino. In the heated argument, the woman films the interaction, claiming that she’s being accused of being “white in America.” The video is uploaded to Facebook and watched by a shocked Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison).
Set in 2019, the film follows investigative journalist Jeff Horowitz (Jeremy Allen White), looking into the possibility that Facebook’s algorithm causes more harm than good. He recruits the help of Haugen, a whistleblower who works for the Civic Integrity Unit and is growing dissatisfied with the company’s insidious practices made under the guise of “free speech”.
Sorkin jumps between the Horowitz and Haugen, to January 2021, when a stiff Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) practices for his upcoming Senate hearing. He’s adamant to defend his staunch position about free speech, even though that means misinformation has grown rampant in the platform, and nothing, not even his frenemy Charlie Garrigan (Bill Burr), can detract him. Unless, of course, The Washington Post has another trick up its sleeve about to drop in January 2021, and, oh, I don’t know, an event that rocked the foundation of democracy in America is about to happen.
Sorkin’s bravery in coming back to the pit without the main talent of his first film is both brave and stupid. But if there was no point of reference of Fincher, Eisenberg, Garfield and Raznor/Ross, The Social Reckoning doesn’t do enough to justify its existence.
We all know what happened, and we all know nothing much came of it. While the first film positioned itself in the hubris of its protagonist to pretty much give us a villain origin story, Reckoning (I refuse to call it a sequel, regardless of what the marketing campaign wants us to believe) doesn’t make a compelling argument.
Everyone is a basic stereotype whose personality revolves around only the task at hand. Gone are the layered character portrayals of Network from a writer who now seems to think that complexity comes from delivering a biting quip. A Sorkinism, if you will.
Sorkin’s visual language is just as muted as his written one. Shots are blocked with little consideration for what they are supposed to mean. The cuts have the candour of TV clunkiness, which works in the small screen as we are half paying attention. On the big screen, it’s a glaring and embarrassing mistake. My favourite one is a cut to Puerto Rico, introduced by one character standing with their arms open on the balcony of their bungalow, like it’s a fucking shampoo commercial.
But Sorkin’s biggest sin is how he doesn’t even realise when he’s being inconvenient. There’s a moment where Horowitz mansplains mansplaining to Haugen using that Sorkin style of “I’m-the-smartest-man-in-the-room”, which only works when said man is saying something deep. This isn’t it. In a showcase of his outdated sensibility, Sorkin reveals his perverted old man era by running a long and unnecessary gag where Haugen decides to dress as an escort so as not to stand out when she visits Horowitz in his hotel to plan the whistleblowing.
Instead of, you know, taking a long raincoat or fancy jacket in case she’s seen in the lobby, but then how would Sorkin film Madison’s cleavage for several scenes? (To the surprise of no one, this never happened. Sorkin created this gag specifically for his own titillation).
I’m not surprised Sorkin isn’t the best director, but at least Molly’s Game and The Trial of the Chicago 7 had some panache. Here, he feels restrained, a far cry from the rebellious man who revelled in shaking the system. He has his characters say, several times, how much they believe in democracy, free speech, capitalism and the free market. He wants to point out a problem but not address the causes that created it. And so much of it is his own voice — even, I think, Zuckerberg, who eventually says the evil thing in a black-and-white flashback with some dramatic framing.
Is Strong good? He’s fine. Strong is a tremendous actor, but his chops are wasted in trying to imitate a man who behaves more like a sketch of a person than a real human being. The charm of Eisenberg was that he didn’t try to imitate Zuckerberg’s mannerisms and, in the process, added some humanity to a person whose moral decay we are witnessing. In here, Strong is asked to do an SNL performance, which, by all means, he nails.
The Social Reckoning tells a truth we all know in the most insufferable way. Every other vintage Sorkin moment is undermined by a bad artistic decision. Where is the experienced writer who excelled at layering his scripts with strong social, political and philosophical conundrums? Going back to the comparison with Alan J. Pakula’s All The President’s Men, written by William Goldman (who also won the Academy Award for it), the story of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (also from The Washington Post) investigating the Watergate scandal. But it’s really about the force of holding power accountable and how that’s a tenet of modern democracy. It’s about the resilience of individuals, and the fundamentals of free speech are only about truth.
There’s one moment in Reckoning where Sorkin scratches the surface of a similar idea. Horowitz tells Haugen that his problem with social media isn’t the fact that it’ll take his job: it’s that it’ll be really bad at it. Somehow, the film doesn’t deliver on that premise.
The plus: Jeremy Strong in pantomime mode is never not entertaining, especially aided by small slivers of classic Sorkinisms
The minus: Take your pick: the outdated misogyny, the Hallmark Channel-level of directing, the tired sucking-up to liberal democracy ideals, the boring centrism, the pointlessness of it all?