Steve Jobs Review

      

Of the many news stories that came out of the Sony e-mail hack, the most interesting was the ongoing production problems that led to Sony releasing their Steve Jobs biopic, perhaps then that’s why the final product isn’t really a biopic. Written by Oscar winner Aaron Sorkin, who more often than not in Hollywood seems to be billed higher than the film’s director, who in this case is England’s own (not Sir) Danny Boyle. The film negates the principals of a standard biopic and instead focuses on three particular points of interest in Jobs life, the unveiling of the mackintosh in ’84, him going out on his own post-apple in ’88 and then his triumphant return and the unveiling of the iMac in ’98. Each ‘act’ is set in a theatre of some sort and focuses on the mounting tensions behind the scenes in the build up to the launch.

                   Steve Jobs, as with every project he works on, entirely belongs to Sorkin, his screenwriting is the dominant force of the film, where everything is kinetic and the people on screen talk like no person has ever done in real life. Boyle doesn’t go unnoticed though, and he manages to bring some flair and a cinematic sense to dialogue driven scenes. There are some outstanding bravura sequences where confrontations between 2 characters rely as heavily on editing and composition as they do on the words of Sorkin. The cast are uniformly brilliant, a role that started off with Christian Bale and passed by Leonardo Di Caprio before landing at the feet of a man who looks nothing like Steve Jobs, its troubled roots don’t show at all in Michael Fassbender’s performance. In a leaked e-mail at Sony, Aaron Sorkin said of his leading man “I don’t know who Michael Fassbender is and the rest of the world isn’t going to care”. Fortunately for Sorkin, Fassbender is this year especially showing himself to be an extraordinary actor, within ten minutes of him on screen you completely ignore his complete lack of physical similarities with Jobs and begin to see the man, he embodies all of Steve Jobs’ more detestable qualities and completely personifies the driven nature and megalomania that got Jobs to where he was. There are strong supporting roles as well, there is a surprisingly great dramatic turn from Seth Rogen as the down beaten Steve Wozniack, a talented mind sick of being in Jobs shadow “I’m tired of being Ringo when I know I’m John” he muses in one confrontation. A former Sorkin pro, Jeff Daniels gives a great performance as CEO John Scully and Michael Stuhlbarg has gone under the radar but his role as Andy Hertzfeld is one of the few genuinely likeable characters on screen. Kate Winslet as Jobs’ head of marketing Joanna Hoffman is probably the most important character, given the hate that could be directed at Jobs, the film needs someone that is warm and likeable and who, for some reason, likes Jobs, Winslet is brilliant at playing the mother hen who can turn fierce when she sees someone like Jobs is straying too far in his ability to alienate other people, and she also tackles her tricky accent with aplomb.

      Given the nature of its structure and even its setting, it’s impossible not to see this film as theatre more than cinema, the film might face 

     up to this aspect in some scenes but it never overcomes it. The same problem goes for Sorkin’s dialogue, nobody in film writes like he does, in the past he has said “I’m a ultimately a playwright winging it as a screenwriter”, a statement which is entirely true but not necessarily a good thing, yes his dialogue is fiercely enjoyable, but it poses a challenge that even the necessary walking and talking can’t seem to overcome, which is putting his screenplay on film and making it cinematic.

       The film has been described by some friends of Jobs as opportunistic, and the producers would be hard pushed to say that it isn’t, making a film that capitalises on the death of a high profile public figure. The problem however isn’t that it’s opportunistic, it’s that the film tells a story that isn’t particularly interesting. The screenplay is packed with tonnes of technical language that when spewed out in Sorkin style forms a cacophony of computer jargon that goes in one ear and out the other. Steve Jobs goes to extreme lengths to create a sense of everything being monumentally important and that serves as justification for most of the characters being so odiously ambitious, but that sense never really comes across. So whilst Steve Jobs might be acted, directed and for the most part written well, it eventually feels perfunctory, maybe I’ll revisit the Ashton Kutcher Jobs film. (High 3 Stars)