Steve Jobs
So…I’m sitting here writing this movie review on a sleek, shiny, light-speed Mac Pro laptop, using Apple’s Pages software, and occasionally looking up fact items on IMDB with my iPhone, using the “World Wide Web”. Why does that matter? It’s a disclosure. I admire the products produced by Apple, although I know enough to realize that behind the scenes of all those staged product rollouts, the media ads with their 5 word sentences like “It just makes things easier” and the print ads with lots of white space and a simple picture, there’s a wealth of angst, stress and contention behind the scenes. The author of a lot of that stress and contention, as well as the innovator, visionary, behind the scenes despot, promoter and media celebrity was Steve Jobs. In addition to co-inventing the Apple I and II, the first boxed-up desktop computers, the early Mac was the first graphical computer, the overpriced Lisa gave us the first graphical powerhouse, the Next computer gave us adaptable web pages like this web site, the iPod gave us “thousands of songs” and the iPhone gave us a library full of information in our pocket. Jobs’ popular persona evolved from the hippie entrepreneur to the manic corporate schemer and, before his death, to something approaching an information technology saint.
The new movie, “Steve Jobs”, isn’t really a conventional biopic narrative at all, but several capsule views of Jobs, mostly taking place in the moments leading up to three of those epic, staged product rollouts, in this case, the original Macintosh, the Next computer (during Jobs’s exile from Apple) and the iMac, the one piece Macintosh that brought the company back from life support, after Jobs’ return to the company he co-founded. It also fleshes out those three moments with flashbacks and flash forwards that add context to the intense dialog of the movie. It shows his reprehensible inability to acknowledge his out-of-wedlock daughter and his lack of financial support for her mother, in spite of his huge wealth. It also shows Jobs driving his employees, partners and original co-founder, Steve Wozniak, nearly crazy or reducing then to tears as he gets ready to go on stage, where he will appear relaxed and calm. We see Jobs hiring and eventually replacing John Sculley as Apple CEO, confronting his ex and daughter, verbally abusing his product developers but somehow managing to inspire enough loyalty that they stick with him and the company for a long time. It helps that they all became extremely rich too.
The screenplay for this movie was written by Aaron Sorkin, an interesting and inspired choice. Sorkin was also the writer behind The Social Network, but he is not a guy who revels in technology. In an interview I heard some months back, he admitted that he mainly writes on paper, only recently bought a computer and really has little interest in the IT world. In a way, that makes him a good choice as a writer. If he can understand the machinations of the IT world enough to write about it, the audience will probably understand too. The script for Steve Jobs is extremely rapid fire and intense, being wordy in the extreme, from beginning to end, with few lingering gazes, musical interludes or non-verbal scenes. There’s nothing in the way of action or noteworthy FX; it’s a dialog movie to its core.
Direction by Danny Boyle is just as intense as it was in films like Trainspotting and 28 Days Later. Scenes are fast moving, camera work is so close up that you see moisture in characters’ eyes and pores in their skin. The film doesn’t let up for a minute. It’s dramatic from the first moment until the credits roll. At that point, you’re exhausted. I don’t really know how much of this verbal conflict took in place in real life before a Jobs rollout, but as a dramatic device it really works. It brings you right into the conflicts that made Jobs what he was and illustrates the stress of making things look cool and easy, like an Apple ad.
The acting was excellent, high-voltage and intense. Michael Fassbender is amazing as Jobs. The portrayal doesn’t try too hard to make him physically look like Jobs, but that works and you get dragged into the drama in spite of it. Kate Winslet as Joanna Hoffman, his product development executive, and, in the movie, his pre-rollout “handler”, is also excellent as one of the few people who could live with Jobs’ intensity without withering. Seth Rogan is Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder, who bailed out early in Apple history, making an easier life for himself with his wealth, but who remained as part of Jobs’s behind the scenes life, at least in the movie script. Jeff Daniels also rises way above “Dumb and Dumber” as John Sculley, alternately challenging and being bullied by Jobs until he was also fired when Jobs returned to the company. This is really a fast moving 2 hours that encapsulates a lot of Job’s biography and computer history. You don’t get a more concise, dramatic, rapid fire story like this very often. If you like either computers or Jobs, this will be fascinating. If you hate computers but like intense, face to face drama, this film is also excellent. I hate to use such cliches but, I can sense some Oscars on the way.
