Someone may have pointed this out already, but Citizen Kane is quite good. Every few minutes you get an iconic image, the storytelling’s effortlessly visual, it features rousing sledding sequences, etc. Also, it’s ensured that a majority of American movies will be, even if they aspire to greatness, pretty terrible. For most films are not photographed nearly so nicely as Kane, yet they still utilize at least one of its three poisonous legacies:

1. Unconvincing old age makeup. Actors like to show “range”, and what better way to demonstrate it than playing a character at more than one point in their life? (Actually, there is a superior method; I won’t reveal it here but will give a hint: Nutty Professor II: The Klumps.) This scourge has plagued countless films, notably Billy Crystal’s magnum opus Mr. Saturday Night, where his Buddy Young Jr. in the later years looks less like a human being than an orc design for Lord of the Rings that Peter Jackson rejected as too grotesque.

2. Amazingly simplistic psychology. Kane is built around the quest to discover the meaning of Charles Foster’s enigmatic last word: Rosebud. And at the end of the movie we learn that, despite all his money, the only time Charles Foster Kane experienced true happiness was when he was a lad, enjoying his sled (which, in fairness, did seem to be a pretty kick-ass sled). And thus a man capable of great generosity and powerful pettiness and untrammeled ambition is reduced to a piece of wood on which one slides down a hill, provided the snow hasn’t already gotten too mushy.

Ever since Kane, far too many films have felt a need to “sum up” a person. The latest to fall in this trap is The Social Network, which offers the tale of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and provides through the depositions from two lawsuits multiple perspectives on his tale. In the interests of time, here are the key points.

a. He wants to go to Harvard parties that look like outtakes from lesser Motley Crue videos

b. But he’s a nerd, and a surly one at that

c. So he becomes a billionaire

d. But in the end he wonders if he should have connected with one sweet girl from long ago (by “long ago”, I mean “like eight months earlier”, since in real life he’s only 26 now)

I do not know Mark Zuckerberg, but I am about to offer a powerful insight into the very core of his being: he likes working on his computer. He really likes doing this. Indeed, he likes doing this an insane amount. I’m sure he also likes girls and parties and symbols of his lost innocence, but he likes computers way more. And this is why he was able to play the essential role in developing something remarkable because he isn’t like most people, who start out working hard but then go, “Eh, one episode of Lost won’t hurt” and suddenly six hours have passed and it’s bedtime.

Nope, Zuckerberg stays at the computer when a lesser man would have long since masturbated and gone to sleep.

And that’s why he has billions. (Though, since he’s sacrificed sleep and masturbation, this wealth has come at what for me would be an unacceptably high price.)

People like Mark Zuckerberg (and Charles Foster Kane too) simply aren’t like most of us. I don’t believe Zuckerberg ever stared at a Facebook page and thought anything other than, “Can we add more features or would the layout become cluttered?”, any more than I think Kane longed for winter sports. The most frustrating thing about the film’s characterization of him is that Jesse Eisenberg so vividly suggests Zuckerberg’s almost alien drive (the performance, for those who haven’t seen it, might best be described as “someone with Asperger’s after doing a pound of blow”), only to have the screenplay continually ground him by acting like the fact that a-guy-could-come-up-with-a-site-that-connects-people-when-he’s-not-really-a-people-person-himself is the most mind-blowing irony since that Alanis Morissette song.

Incidentally, in real life “Rosebud” actually was the nickname Kane-inspiration William Randolph Hearst gave to his mistress’s ladyparts.

This strikes me as a more plausible item that a man would long for on his deathbed.

It also brings us to point three.

3. The “True” Story. Citizen Kane is based on a true story, but there was sufficient untruth that the names were changed to acknowledge, “Hey, we made some stuff up.” Not the case with The Social Network. Beyond the fact a guy founded a website that did pretty well so everyone sued him, everything is up for grabs (this article lists some of the ways the story was altered). A big change? Zuckerberg says he’s been dating the same girl since before Facebook was founded, suggesting an inability to connect with the opposite sex may not have driven him all that deeply since he’d already connected with one of them he likes so much that he continues to connect with her today.

Likewise, the movie makes no attempt to reconcile its repeated assertions that Zuckerberg was utterly consumed with a longing to get into Harvard’s most exclusive circles — this even pops up in those depositions at a key moment — with the fact that, the moment he had the status that would allow him entry to wherever he wanted to go, he dropped out of Harvard. Yep, when faced with entry to that glamorous world, Zuckerberg chose to keep dressing like a freshman on laundry day and went right back to his computer. Zuckerberg has noted he felt the filmmakers altered the facts because they “can’t wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things.”

It’s hard to argue with him.

This is not to say the movie does not get some things correct (for instance, Zuckerberg concedes that every shirt in the movie is one he has worn in real life at some point — glad you nailed that aspect, Fincher). But clearly, when it comes to choosing between the facts or regurgitating a version of the poor-boy-who-longs-to-be-accepted-by-elite-society-little-realizing-the-toll-it-shall-take-on-his-very-soul tale that Fitzgerald perfected with The Great Gatsby almost 90 years ago, the filmmakers pick the latter.

Which is fine and dandy — I support using one’s imagination, even when paradoxically it’s used to create something derivative and predictable — except they insist on having it both ways, as they trumpet their right to alter the truth, yet when someone points out that every female in the film is a slut or a moron or an Asian arsonist, this complaint is dismissed by noting, “We had to stick to the facts of the story” (as they so faithfully did, except for the dozens of times they changed them to hit all the conventional story beats — Hollywood’s cool with repeatedly making the point that women are useless and gross, but the three-act structure will be respected).

At this point I should note The Social Network isn’t bad. It held my attention, which was quite a feat as I saw it on an airplane with the sort of hangover you only get after attempting to live off rum for three days. (Verdict: Doable.) I think Eisenberg gives easily the best performance of the year and Justin Timberlake continues to prove there’s life after boy bands. But the fact that a work that repeatedly takes a genuinely remarkable story — and not necessarily a positive one either, for while I think the film is often unfair to Zuckerberg, based on what I’ve read about him if asked to describe him in three words I’d choose “insanely driven prick” — and twists it into pure cliché will likely win Best Picture (and will definitely win Best Screenplay) makes me far, far sadder than the fact some people like to keep in touch via computers rather than picking up the phone or handwriting a letter or firing up the fax machine or tapping on the telegraph or releasing their carrier pigeons or using whatever form of communication Aaron Sorkin deems preferable.

To conclude, like many observers, The Social Network reminds me of Citizen Kane.

I just don’t mean it as a compliment.

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