It's important to keep in mind while watching David Fincher's latest film that it was intended as a dramatic piece and as such some of the details regarding the Facebook lawsuits and the events leading up to them have been modified to better suit the narrative. Probably the best example of this is the character of Erica, Mark Zuckerberg's girlfriend at the beginning of the film. That she is in fact fictional does no harm to the movie, but her character serves as a point of insight into the motivations of Zuckerberg. The final scene works metaphorically to illustrate the way he attempts to compensate his need for acceptance with the creation of Facebook, sending her a friend request and continually refreshing the page to see if she's accepted or not, the scene running long enough that we get a sense of futility.
The screenplay functions around this emotional center and as a result does something worthy of praise. It takes events such as legal proceedings and computer programming, things that should intrinsically be boring to the general audience, and through the use of a non-linear narrative structure permeated with sharp and well-written dialogue makes them fascinating. The main story takes place during the legal proceedings of the two lawsuits with flashbacks establishing how we got to that point. This allows us to contrast the character relationships (Zuckerberg, Eduardo and the Winklevosses) in the beginning with what they will become pending the lawsuit and creates a dramatic tension that drives the rest of the story. A linear narrative may have worked fine but it would not have been as effective because, as Fincher is clearly aware, The film is more concerned with the transformative process of the characters than the end result. We already know how the story ends.
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