S0CIAL RECKONING

Aaron Sorkin has a special place in our culture. After I saw The West Wing (twice) I knew more about American politics than I did about the systems in countries I’d lived in for years. I watched his work with special interest and admired The Social Network, which he wrote, so a second Facebook film, with Sorkin now also directing, was a must see. There was a buzz out of finding a character in it do President Jed Bartlett’s “Walk with me” routine.

The makers are at pains to tell us The Social Reckoning is not a sequel. Jesse Eisenberg begged off repeating the Mark Zuckerberg role and Jeremy (The Apprentice) Strong’s interpretation is a different character with a different story arc. The action follows Facebook staffer Frances Haugen (Mickey Madison, who has managed to find a role to sustain the momentum of her conspicuous lead in Anora). We meet her character, speaking up with a bunch of system cards in her hand at the Facebook company meeting, failing to get any attention when she raises the dismantling of their Civic Integrity Unit, and watch her turn to new-hire Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz/Jeremy Allen White, in a first meeting arranged on a remote hiking trail so that any observer can be seen coming a mile away.

White & Madison

If the film has a shortcoming, it is that the structure shows through the surface. It starts small with Portia Doubleday pulled over alone and intoxicated on a deserted stretch of road at night, firing up her phone camera as a cop car draws up behind her, and ends big with the January sixth riots and a Senate hearing. You are not going to get a more topical production. The Social Reckoning proposes a rogue algorithm, in the hands of its ridiculously wealthy owner, causing chaos unchecked, because outrage increases his profit and influence. We will only glimpse Doubleday , though it is her radicalisation which drives Madison into the inquiry which becomes the film’s major plotline. There’s also a stopover at a restaurant where the leads meet a family eating with their withdrawn daughter, victim of eight pages of Net hate mail. These are presented as surface manifestations of a Facebook that knowingly allowed itself to be used in  genocide in Myanmar, aiding drug traffickers, organised crime,  “stoking monetary gullibility.”

It’s spelled out when Jeremy Strong’s Zuckerberg is fronting Wunmi Mosaku’s In-House practice Senate Hearing, with name cards written with a Sharpie on folded paper, and he answers Devil’s Advocate comedian Bill Burr urging closer supervision “I’m a free speech absolutist… We’re not the referee. We’re the village square.” 

This is not new. I once heard Gregory Peck describe a film-making culture at the time of To Kill a Mockingbird,  when “It was thought that if you mixed ideas and entertainment, you debased both.” I tended to think along those lines myself having a life-long horror of censorship - particularly religion based censorship - but now we’re in the Trump era - though no one invokes religion. One Battle After Another, Once Upon a Time in the Middle East and now The Social Reckoning deserve attention for what they are saying as much as their quality as film.  That’s not to say any of them are lacking as movies.                                                             

The Social Reckoning is recognisably Sorkin.  Mean Wall St. Journal editor Betty Gilpin could be the sister of Demi Moore in A Few Good Men and this one also is making a complex argument -  that rather than accept any diminution in influence or profit, Facebook has prospered by harvesting the suppressed rage of the socially inadequate, the unskilled, uneducated and inarticulate.

The new Facebook film is bound to be compared with All the President’s Men, which is probably why  they are is at pains to avoid familiar scenes, no meeting a mysterious whistle blower in a dim basement parking garage here.  After the hiking trail, Madison shows up at the swank hotel in the sexy black cocktail number, so people will think she’s on a date.

Sorkin is fascinated by words and he likes to mix in a bit of pop culture.  A central ingredient is his meant to-be-read-at-speed dialogue. “The Mafia would be a better enemy to make.” A vital document is brought to Madison’s apartment door by a fellow worker she barely knew, who spotted her phrasing (“matches and dynamite”) in her anonymously published  leak. He cautions Madison that Casandra was someone who the Gods gifted with the power to see the future and cursed with having no one believe her and refutes the comparison with Chicken Little. ”It’s the opposite.” That’s like Ronny Chen listing the ideals of American society - “Live Long and Prosper” and Separation of Powers.  The moment of truth in that  first meeting with Madison comes when, indignant at his unfamiliarity with her Techno World, she accuses “I’ve given you a story” and he comes back “No, you’ve told me a story.” All the reviewers pick up on that.

Sorkin & Madison

The writer-director is also notably cine-literate. We get the scene of the character mistaking the greeting to the person standing behind them that George Stevens repeated. We’re not too far away from Stevens’ Woman of the Year. There is a discussion of Frank Capra (whose films are full of malignant magnates) recalling the exchange in the White House entrance in The American President, which Sorkin wrote. There, Sigourney Weaver uses the term “Capra-esque”, cautioned that the black guard will not understand it, only to have the man weigh in with an informed explanation. In the new film, White warns that it’s not enough to know the political films, saying Capra also did Arsenic & Old Lace and Lost Horizon. Is this another one where I believe it because I want to believe it? There is a trap here. Just because I like the way I see Sorkin’s mind working, doesn’t mean that his conclusions are sound

The comparison with the Social Network is telling. We prefer Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg to that film's Micklevoss Twins, whose self-approving description ends “and there’s two of us.” Here, the only person we like less than Jeremy Strong is “a sitting President” who the Facebook team are seen waiting in vain to call off the Capitol rioters that he has used their network to rally. Donald Trump is not mentioned, but his presence is constantly felt.

Understandably cautious, Columbia took the checking out of the hands of its own legal department and went to an outside firm and the filmmakers omitted previews, which would have given the subjects time to consider action. The makers’ terror was that Sony was a megalith of which film was only a sideline and they might write off their production to avoid bother - but that didn’t happen.

The indications are that the new film is not reaching a mass audience  - too smart, too articulate? It took only five million on its first week end, while The Social Network did twenty million sixteen years ago. The significant change is being represented as having Sorkin replace the earlier film’s David Fincher as director. I won’t buy that.  Mank is the only example of Fincher’s work that I like, while in the gap, outside his TV, Sorkin has already directed three respectable films of his own - and he worked with ten million less in the budget.

With reservations, let's see The Social Reckoning as a viable substitute to offer the people who will never read the fifteen-part Wall Street Journal series or the books put out by both Frances Haugen and Jeff Horwitz.  The line in the film is “Someone’s gonna have to explain it to them.” I rate it enough as entertainment or information to want to see it again. The film may not be the last word but it does bring the argument to us. It’s alarming that people don’t seem to be listening.

Social Reckoning - secret Meeting

 

Barrie Pattison - 2026