Movie Review – Steve Jobs (2015)
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogan, Jeff Daniels, Michael Stuhlberg, Katherine Waterston, and Sarah Snook.
Time for some honesty Binge readers: Despite the talent behind this surrogate biopic about a man who was a genius to some, madman to others, I had close to zero interest in Steve Jobs. A 2013 half hearted attempt at one starring Ashton Kutcher didn’t help matters, and even hearing that Danny Boyle was behind the camera and Aaron Sorkin being the scripter, the film could have come and gone without a whimper and I would not have cared. So imagine my surprise as the first few frames of Steve Jobs flourished across the screen and like a trout on an early morning fishing trip, I was hooked line & sinker for its entire 122 minute running time. The stylistic flourishes behind the camera Boyle is known for are not here in abundance, but show their touches when called for, and Boyle seems more reigned in here than ever. It is all for the best, as Steve Jobs is by far the most involving film of the year, and when it was over, I could not help but think my pessimism was more than a little miscalculated judgment. It was an unintended commentary on the life of the film’s subject.
Steve Jobs is broken up into three acts, with well placed concentrated flashbacks scattered throughout. In its first act, a 29 year old Jobs is set to unveil the first ever Macintosh computer. With a well hyped Super Bowl ad and massive amounts of anticipation at his back, Jobs (Fassbender) is a dragon breathing fire, even going so far as insisting to software developer Andy Hertzfeld (Stuhlberg) that the computer needs to say hi to the audience. This is also where we are introduced to his ex girlfriend (an excellent Waterston), who insists that Jobs pay for the welfare of her daughter, of which Jobs denies being the father. On top of all this, his partner in crime and constant source of moral support Joanna Hoffman (Winslet) insists to Jobs he needs to get his act together and establish some form of balance. A balance which includes Steve Wozniak (Rogan), who is struggling to get some form of recognition from Jobs as that of Apple co-founder.
This is all in the first act, folks. In lesser hands, this would all feel muddled and self serving. But armed with Sorkin’s script, Boyle keeps things grounded, and we get to know all of those around Jobs without the befuddlement of technical jargon and business speak. Sorkin certainly brings the same sort of rapid fire dialogue and character flashes he brought to David Fincher’s 2010 film The Social Network, and it is all to the benefit of the story. Purists will argue that even with the back and forth with Jobs and those around him, the film’s colors, while not sunshine and rainbows, are maybe a little too bright a representation of the man whose story Sorkin is trying to tell. But adapting works has always been a huge strength of Sorkin’s, and the way he adapts Walter Isaacson’s book is commendable in that no one ever gets backed into too far a corner they cannot get out of.
Act two starts off in 1988. The aftermath of the Macintosh computer’s tanking makes things hard on Jobs, as he is let go by the company and he is forced into a comeback with his brand new company NeXT. Here is where I need to commend the performance of one Michael Fassbender. The man looks nothing like the person whom he is portraying (the attempts to make him look 29 are hilarious.) Yet my eyes never lose track of him, as Fassbender turns in such a commanding performance that I not once thought of how he looked, and concentrated instead on who he played. The actor makes good use of a special kind of cathartic acting ability, and the film’s tendency to concentrate on the sometimes aloof relationships Jobs had throughout his entire life serve Fassbender well. It is telling that until he learns of his daughter’s brilliance, Jobs casts her off like one of his employees. However, her blooming brilliance now makes her one of him, and the way Fassbender plays this entire relationship speaks wonders to not one, but two different forms of Jobs the man and Fassbender the actor. Pretty impressive.
Act three takes place from 1998 on, without a doubt the most revolutionary period of time for technology. Which makes it less than coincidental that this period was put at film’s end. The internet’s legs keep growing and Jobs is close to unveiling the very first ipod. Naysayers to how Job treated his daughter as opposed to his work will have a field day with this portion of the film. Yet tales about moguls who concentrate more on their work than their flesh and blood have been told a million times before. But very rarely is it done with as much care and as steady a hand as those that belong to Boyle and Sorkin. Fassbender’s portrayal of aloofness lends itself to brilliance here, and Boyle’s direction is just stylish enough to get inside the emotions of those around him.
Comparisons to much the same situations as those portrayed in The Social Network are inevitable. But Sorkin is not dumb. He writes Steve Jobs like he knows those comparisons are coming, and uses the camera of Boyle to point out the differences between the two works. Love him or hate him, Steve Jobs was a man whose story serves filmmaking to a T. Steve Jobs the film is a powerful, if sometimes fictionalized context of a man who was not only a concentrated and tortured genius. He was a visionary that did what he did so that his unclouded vision was a foretold conclusion to changing the world. In many ways, the men and women behind the scenes of this powerfully brilliant film can claim the same fits of parallelism.
10 out of 10