The Social Reckoning Movie Review:
The Social Reckoning leaves you conflicted. On the one hand, it is an entertaining investigative journalism drama about a nerdy whistleblower and a technologically inept journalist teaming up to question a tech giant with more power than most governments. It talks about a small chapter in the ongoing era of tech oligarchy, and is engrossing, entertaining, and cinematic. On the other hand…
Director: Aaron Sorkin
Cast: Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Bill Burr
The Social Network (2010) marked the birth of the age of social media with a fittingly ominous tone, and it showed how the DNA of this ever-mutating beast was built with quintessentially human qualities like greed, envy, and the unceasing hunger for power. Almost two decades have rolled by since the social media era began, and through an historical lens two decades are barely a blip, but the number, scale, intensity, and the rapidity of changes the world has been subjected to since then, as a direct result of Big Tech, has been alarming. And yet, writer-director Aaron Sorkin plucks out a small chapter in this era, lathers it with rich storytelling, transforms it into an easily digestible (and most importantly) familiar commercial product, and sweetens the deal with cinematic catharsis at the end.
This follow up to The Social Network (2010) focuses on the 2021 Facebook leak by the whistleblower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) and journalist Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), while Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) prepares for the US senate testimony. The film observes how Facebook (now Meta) radicalised people by nudging them towards right wing extremist groups. We see how level-headed individuals can become paranoid racists, we see how they even become rioters brazen enough to storm the capital, we see how the platform amplifies and intensifies bullying, and how it destroys mental health in teenagers. These interesting points are emphatically presented but never discussed with depth. The film shows you characters being rattled by these awful findings on social media impact. But it’s field of vision is so narrow that except for the business reasons given by Zuckerberg and team, it is hard to understand why the radicalisation happened, how those at power got away with enabling it, and how the problem simply transformed and survives still.
Aaron Sorkin is eminently focused on providing a true-blue journalism thriller, ticking every box that would make a well rounded film of the genre by ticking all the boxes that would make it so. Which is a ridiculous thing to criticize about if we were talking about a completely fictional story. But The Social Reckoning does (and wants you to) grasp the scope and real-world impact of the story it is trying to tell. You cannot take up one of the most important subjects of our times and narrow it down to one episode, and present it as a triumphant critique on Big Tech. You cannot cut one of the many tendrils of the beast and claim to have slain it.
If not for its narrow scope, The Social Reckoning works as an old-school investigative drama, with a lot of the tried-and-tested tropes intact. The whistleblower data scientist is of course the socially awkward nerd and representative of the barely lingering light in the tech industry. The journalist representing the old guard of print journalism, is of course pretty confident in the power of old-school journalism but is out of his depth with the subject of investigation. There is the acerbic yet ‘will-stand-by-you-no-matter-what’ chief editor. And of course a handful of wise cracking interns who orbit around Jeff Horwitz and slowly learn to respect him. Even though all of these tropes are familiar, they somehow add up to an almost hypnotic allure, like how the most familiar route on your daily commute is also the most pleasurable because you know it well and do not have to exert mental effort. And then there are moments that make you crave some fresh creative decisions. Like when it cuts to Puerto Rico and a stereotypical Latino music starts playing.
One of the best things about the film is how it reveals information to the audience. Which is crucial in a topic with is inundated with statistics. Within a conversation between two characters, If the film wants to throw a number at you, it dredges up your personal opinion about the topic of the statistic, asks you to guess the number, and then gives it to you, essentially tying your emotions to what goes on screen. However, less than half of such smartness is found in Jeremy Strong’s portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg, who plays it no different than someone would in an SNL skit.
The tagline of The Social Reckoning reads, “We are way past making friends” which mirrors the issues with the film, which circles around issues the world is way past, Mark Zuckerberg himself had somehow surpassed. And even though the problems of the algorithm has mutated from simply encouraging negativity to now contributing to cognitive decline through AI, creating a numbed down society by fragmenting our attention and flooding us with cheap dopamine, we still curiously seem to have accepted it, maybe that collective passive resignation, is what The Social Reckoning should have been about.
