If
we have to sit through another movie
about this arrogant bastard—whose company created a lot of amazing devices that
I love—at least we get a somewhat unconventional movie, with some truly good
performances. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin structures the film like a three-act
play, not a traditional biopic. Every
time I sit down in front of one of those biographical dramas—even a good one—a
little part of me dies of boredom. I went in expecting that same tired formula:
Steve Jobs the kid who couldn’t relate to the other, normal children, Steve
Jobs the kid who couldn’t resist taking things apart and putting them back
together, Steve Jobs the smartest, ballsiest guy in the room. Then we would eventually get to Jobs's fall from grace and resurrection, the most interesting parts of his career. The structure frees director Danny Boyle, too. He doesn't have to honor the constraints of a traditional bio. What we have here is a stripped down drama that puts its actors under the microscope to see what they can do. It's immensely entertaining.
Aaron Sorkin treats us to a highly concentrated airing of grievances, where we
learn how justified was our disdain for Steve Jobs (but please, take more of my
money!), but where we also learn that Steve Jobs was a human being. Michael
Fassbender, the automaton of Great Acting, turns in a surprisingly lively and
funny performance as the Master himself. Fassbender doesn’t chew up the
scenery; He approaches this character as a flawed human being, and he controls
our need to hate him with precision. By the end, that hatred has simmered to
mild dislike with a touch of fondness.
Like
The Social Network, Steve Jobs has a weight to it that feels
slightly out of proportion with its subject matter. I think that’s because we
still don’t fully understand how radically these technological gurus have
reshaped our culture. And, perhaps, these two men in particular won’t be the ones we remember one
hundred years from now. (It seems especially likely with Zuckerburg, as teenagers
increasingly abandon the Facebook ship for other hipper social media sites.)
But these movies put their fingers on the culture in an interesting and bold
way: They force us to confront the reality that we’ve given our lives over to
companies run by men who aren’t always very good human beings. And yet, these
men are more human—not less—by the end.
Kate
Winslet, who plays Steve Jobs’s right hand, Joanna Hoffman, gives an equally
strong performance. Hoffman seems always trying to save Jobs from himself. In the many instances when
Jobs deliberately shatters the relationship between himself and any number of
his coterie, it’s Joanna who’s desperately picking up the pieces, who’s
appealing to a version of Steve Jobs that she loves and respects. It’s through
her that we feel any connection to Jobs at all. Winslet’s best accomplishment
in this film is that she makes Joanna strong and appealing, not weak and
slovenly. You feel that she could walk away at any moment, but chooses loyalty.
The
electric force of the drama in this movie is reason enough to see it. I think
that’s why Sorkin opted not to give us the grand sweep of this man’s life. A
grand narrative would have deified him and taken all the excitement out of the story. This movie shows Steve Jobs—as far as I can
tell—as he was: arrogant, myopic, cowardly, brazen, sharp, funny, and flawed.
With
Seth Rogen (as Steve Wozniak, Jobs’s partner and the man who did much of the
brain-work of Apple), Jeff Daniels, Katherine Waterston (as Steve’s troubled
girlfriend), Michael Stuhlberg, and playing Lisa Jobs at different ages, Perla Haney-Jardine,
Ripley Sobo, and Mackenzie Moss.
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