Was the internet was a mistake? Will social media will be the end of us all? Hyperbolic? Certainly, but these questions also get us closer to the truth than we might believe. The internet and social media are addictive time-wasters for many people, but for far too many others over the last decade, they’ve also served as radicalizers for right-wing extremists. As always, we could blame the government-enabled corporate philosophy that puts profits over people and leaves principles, if any, in the rearview mirror.
That conundrum — or, rather, lack of one given our current predicament — lies at the unsteady centre of writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s middling, journalism-centred drama, The Social Reckoning. An ostensible sequel to The Social Network, the 2010 Facebook-focused Academy Award-winning drama directed by David Fincher, Sorkin’s belated follow-up fast-forwards a decade to 2019-2021. But it feels like an artifact from a far more innocent or naïve time, one where the re-election of an ex-office holder — and convicted felon — charged with numerous crimes seemed outside the realm of the possible.
But re-elected he was and the consequences will be felt long well into the next quarter of a century, if not longer. Sorkin’s film anticipates the second election of that president by situating some of the drama five years prior. The Social Reckoning attempts to connect the current political environment to Facebook (among others) and the 2019 decision made by Zuckerberg (played by Jeremy Strong, taking over for Jesse Eisenberg) and his executive team to rewrite the algorithm for so-called “Meaningful Social Interactions” (MSI). But the effort falls short of providing any new information or insights beyond the too-late recognition of the harms Zuckerberg’s “profit over people” decision inflicted on social media users via Facebok, Instagram, and others.
Sorkin centres The Social Reckoning not on Zuckerberg again — he’s a secondary but nevertheless pivotal, character here — but on Facebook employee and data scientist Frances Haugen (Anora‘s Mikey Madison) and Jeff Horwitz (The Bear‘s Jeremy Allen White), an investigative journalist for The Wall Street Journal. Horwitz eventually convinces Haugen, deeply concerned about the executive decision to alter Facebook’s MSI algorithm, to help him uncover the ultra-secretive Facebook’s radicalizing actions and their harmful impact.
As the centre of Sorkin’s film, Horwitz and Haugen’s relationship rarely feels or sounds authentic. It starts out of conscience (Haugen’s) and need (Horwitz’s). It still, however, remains stuck in an awkward dance of petty insults. Haugen repeatedly calls the tech-deficient Horwitz different flavours of dumb, while Horwitz deliberately ignores her boorish and insensitive behaviour. Arguably, the “story” matters more than Horwitz’s feelings about Haugen’s condescension, but it never changes. Only in the final moments when Horwitz admonishes Haugen to avoid being “mean” does she seem to acknowledge her behaviour.
Unsurprisingly, Sorkin’s depiction of Haugen, whether founded in objective, verifiable reality or not, embraces the overused conventions and clichés of presumably neurodivergent or neurodivergent-adjacent characters on film: She’s so brilliant, so above and beyond the rest of humanity intellectually that social roles and social constraints don’t apply to her or, if they do, they can be hand-waved away. While they shouldn’t, it also points to a major deficiency in Sorkin’s writing: Haugen isn’t so much a character as she is a collection of tics and mannerisms.
Horwitz isn’t Woodward or Bernstein, but he’s close enough, the all-too-rare character driven less by career ambition (though there is that) than an unquenchable desire to uncover and expose the truth, especially where the usual Powers-That-Be are involved. It’s a pity, then, that Sorkin gives Horwitz so little depth beyond what we see and hear from him in the opening moments.
Even when Sorkin’s writing hits its proverbial marks, his limited talents as a director continually let him and, by extension, The Social Reckoning and the audience, down. Visually, Sorkin will always foreground writing and performance first and second, leaving aesthetics for last. Too often, Sorkin’s limited directorial toolkit results in flat visuals, simple camera movements (when it moves at all), and editing that lacks punch or sizzle. A more visually oriented director like David Fincher or Danny Boyle (the latter directed the Steve Jobs biopic, Steve Jobs, from Sorkin’s screenplay) could — and likely would — do wonders with this script. But, unfortunately, he took up that mission himself.
