Back in 2010, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher teamed up to dramatize the creation of Facebook in the Oscar-winning drama The Social Network. Five years later, Sorkin and filmmaker Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) are taking a similar approach in exploring the life of the late Apple co-founder in Steve Jobs, and as it turns out, the two projects have far more in common than just their focus on technological pioneers.
The film opens with footage of 2001: A Space Odyssey author Arthur C. Clarke speculating on a future run by computers before jumping ahead in time to the dynamic Michael Fassbender (X-Men: Days of Future Past) as Jobs. From the outset, it’s clear that the film intends to paint him as a troubled visionary, but instead of attempting to explain his early life, Boyle’s film centers around three pivotal product launches in Jobs’ history, namely the introduction of the first Macintosh computer, the NeXTcube and finally the iMac.
As Jobs prepares for each presentation, he encounters a number of personal and professional obstacles along the way, including former colleague Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels) and former flame Chrissann Brennan (Katherine Waterston). Based on the book by Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs certainly took significant liberties with the real-life story, condensing and simplifying 14 years of story into three tightly woven events to create a heightened sense of drama, and for the most part, it works in spades.
Fassbender brings his usual quiet intensity to Jobs, showing just enough emotion to make him a somewhat sympathetic character but never truly letting his guard down enough to appear wholly vulnerable. As portrayed in the film, Jobs is the sort of control-obsessed businessman that would make Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada look warm-hearted, but his disconnection from those around him is countered by such a distinct vision of what works that it raises the Whiplash-ian question of whether brilliance in a given field is possible without the requisite sacrifice of one’s personal happiness.
Jobs believes in the artistry behind his products — even comparing computers to paintings at one point — to such a degree that he has absolute confidence in his ability to revolutionize the business. “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them,” he says, and the fact that the real-life Jobs’ leadership of Apple undeniably altered the world of technology forever (name one person you know who doesn’t have a Mac, an iPhone or an iPod in their possession) underscores just how confounding and frustrating it is that machines seem to be the only thing he can relate to. All of that (and more) is so well-conveyed in both Fassbender’s performance and Sorkin’s words that it would be a shame not to see them both acknowledged this awards season.
At times, the film is staged almost like a play — fittingly, the cast rehearsed and shot each segment individually and in sequence — that Sorkin’s crackling dialogue adds new dimension to each time-crunch that Jobs find himself in, wringing every bit of intensity out of the deadline-driven atmosphere that naturally turns up the heat for the entire cast of characters. Even so, some viewers may become frustrated that these segments tend to feature progressions of the same conflicts presented earlier in the film. Even so, the supporting cast has opportunity to shine, with Kate Winslet particularly good as Joanna Hoffman, Jobs’ marketing executive and right-hand woman throughout Boyle’s film.
For people who aren’t fans of dialogue-driven drama (especially Sorkin’s signature brand), Steve Jobs might seem overly pretentious, and Boyle’s sterile color palette as well as his visual touches, such as the occasional integration of both video and text within scenes, could distract more than accent the moment. Still, Steve Jobs — much like The Social Network — doesn’t quite attempt to explain its subject’s mindset but aims to contextualize the man behind the myth. Easily among the best films of its kind this year, Steve Jobs is the perfect choice for anyone looking for a mature, intelligent character study featuring a unique narrative structure and an Oscar-worthy lead performance,
Rating: 4 out of 5
Steve Jobs stars Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, Michael Stuhlbarg, Katherine Waterston and John Ortiz. It is directed by Danny Boyle.Follow Robert Yaniz Jr. on Twitter @CrookedTable! Click here for more Crooked Table reviews!