Steve Jobs review
I’m still not entirely sure what to make of Steve Jobs.
In a world where most movies are prepacked along genre lines and presold with months of trailers and advertising, that’s an achievement in itself. But this production from director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin is a slippery beast in all manner of ways.
The film picks three moments in the life of the former Apple CEO between 1984 and 1998 and gives us a snapshot of the final few minutes before Jobs goes on stage to present a trio of products – the Apple Mackintosh, NeXT and iMac.
It’s a strange structure which plays out like three short films, and Boyle separates them further by filming each in a different medium – from 16mm film through 35mm and on to digital for the final part.
Add in some montages to fill in the gaps and some eccentric visual touches – like projecting data onto the background of scenes – and there’s plenty to try to take in from a aesthetic standpoint alone. And then you add in the dialogue.
Sorkin has become known for the machine gun patter of his scripts and that’s in full force here, with remarks and quips and bon mots dropped into every conversation and delivered at speed while often on the move. It may be busy but it’s also more focussed than it might seem at first glance, giving us insights into relationships and, more often, showing the character of Jobs.
Let’s be clear, no one is suggesting that Michael Fassbender’s appearance here is actually Jobs – this is a fictional account of three days out of an entire life, and ones which conflate and fabricate events in pursuit of drama and entertainment.
To some degree, the film isn’t really about Jobs at all. While the broadstrokes of history are shown, his sacking from Apple and rise back to prominence, it doesn’t feel like a biopic. To my mind, it’s more of a showcase of what one man will do to bring his vision to the world – the great feats he can accomplish and the terrible acts he’s capable of in pursuit of inventing the future.
Boyle and Sorkin and Fassbender’s Jobs is portrayed as a monster here but that’s less an indictment of the actual man than what happens when you distil these kinds of events down into something this focussed. This is a fiction, an entertainment and it’s full of some of the best one liners of the year.
Fassbender is incredible in the lead role, somehow wringing a kind of charisma from a cacophony of cruel acts. He’s a dictator with a plan who will destroy anything that gets in his way, including long time friends and any chance at a relationship with his daughter Lisa.
That story between father and daughter is a recurring aspect of the film and lends it some humanity about of the constant struggle against operating systems, board members and stock prices. We see Jobs coming to terms with what it means to be a father over almost a decade and a half, and the arc for the character is impressively presented, without sinking into sappy territory for the most part.
The rest of the cast is also excellent, with Kate Winslet making the biggest impression as Jobs’ closest companion Joanna Hoffman. She’s the only one capable of calling him out when he’s gone too far, and it’s a complex relationship that’s refreshingly free of sexual dynamics.
There isn’t a lot of room for other performers but they all do their bit – from an effective Michael Stuhlbarg to watchable Seth Rogen, and I think Jeff Daniels should exclusively spit out Sorkin’s dialogue from now on.
Steve Jobs is quick witted and entertaining and a fascinating study of maniacal determination but it’s also a pretty strange film – both structurally and in terms of its subject matter. Ultimately it’s a two hour movie about people talking really fast before they launch long obsolete computers and that’s definitely going to turn off some viewers. But for everyone else is fascinating and utterly unique stuff.
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