Director: Danny Boyle Starring: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, Katherine Waterston, Michael Stuhlbarg Writer: Aaron Sorkin | 4.5/5 Steve Jobs When it comes to deceased geniuses, it seems like artistic adaptation and reflection is endless. That is one of the things that made that person a genius. As intriguing as it seems, you can oversaturate a market with said adaptations and reflections. What with all the books, documentaries, and films about Steve Jobs, the enigmatic brainchild and co-founder of Apple, you would hope that someone would eventually make a capital-D definitive work about the legend. That wait is over. Steve Jobs, the unorthodox Danny Boyle-directed, Aaron Sorkin-penned film, is everything you would want a Jobs biopic to be. Divided into three acts, each focusing on one of Jobs’s product launches, Boyle and Sorkin tell us more about the man than any birth-until-death film ever could. When I go see movies like this, I always ask myself if the subject would enjoy it. It’s not necessarily vital by any means. Saying that, one of the main reasons (among many) I did not enjoy the 2013 Ashton Kutcher-led Jobs is because I just kept thinking how much Steve would have hated something so generic and conventional. Steve Jobs is a movie that Steve Jobs himself could have dug. Prone to fictionalizing his own accounts of how things happened, I think he would dig the way Sorkin molds loose facts to create a singular piece of art that services his purposes, not that of those form fact-checking buzzkills. At times, Kutcher looked like Jobs’s long lost brother, but his portrayal clung to shallow imitations. Would the man have preferred Michael Fassbender’s far superior interpretation, even if the two share little likeness? I cannot say for certainty; I know which I prefer, though. |
Similar to last year’s Oscar-winning Birdman, Steve Jobs plays out in chunks - three, to be exact - that zip along in real time, following the characters as they frantically move from room to room spouting Sorkin’s signature dialogue. The three acts may span fifteen years, but the same core group of characters are seen in each portion. That group consists of Jobs’s “work wife” and closest confidant Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet, stellar), under-appreciated Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen, giving what may be his best performance ever), ex-girlfriend/baby mama Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston, Inherent Vice), his daughter Lisa (Makenzie Moss at 5, Ripley Sobo at 9, and Perla Haney-Jardine at 19), Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels, a Sorkin regular), and head of tech/family friend Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg). Like a cast of Broadway’s finest, this group of actors commands, shifts, and swerves with the punches of the story that Sorkin and Boyle have so expectantly mapped out. Each of them deserves an individual moment of praise.
No one deserves more praise, however, than Fassbender. I’m at a loss if this performance will finally win the Oscar-nominee his deserved trophy, but I surely would not complain if it did. To take on the role of an enigma as deified as Jobs, and do so knowing you look nothing like him, is a feat I would have passed up - and one many big names, like DiCaprio and Christian Bale, did pass up. In hindsight, no one could have pulled off what Fassbender has done here. He has taken Jobs’s famously cold, oftentimes harsh personal skills and imbued them with a sense of vulnerability.
Nowhere is the more finely realized than in emotionally and artistically satisfying relationship between Jobs and his daughter Lisa. In the first act, Jobs cruelly rejects his paternity, even though a court mandated it so. This is a well documented part of his early life; thankfully, the filmmakers don’t gloss over it. Even after he seems to accept that Lisa is his own, he still always places her under his work: namely, making sure the mystique of Steve Jobs the Genius is not tarnished. As the film draws to an end, you see that Lisa was the focus of the film the whole time. After that, you want to immediately give the 121 minute another go. I would like to add that this is not a daunting thought, because the movie is practically over before you know it. In all seriousness, it feels like a short film.
That’s where the skills of Danny Boyle come in. The guy once made an exhilaratingly entertaining movie about a guy getting his arm stuck under a rock for 127 hours. In similar fashion, Boyle ends up being the perfect fit for Sorkin’s setting-challenged film. Sorkin may have imagined the story as a stage play (and it could easily be one), but Boyle makes it feel like a blockbuster more epic in emotional scope than anything we saw this Summer. I went in wishing David Fincher would have followed through on his initial connection to the film. Afterwards, I am glad he chose to go elsewhere. We have, after all, already seen Fincher do Sorkin with The Social Network. At times, Steve Jobs feels like a spiritual sequel to that slightly superior film, but Boyle always finds a way to make it his own. Steve Jobs should not be compared to The Social Network or anything else on Boyle, Fincher, or Sorkin’s resume. It is its own beast and unquestionably one of the best films of the year.
No one deserves more praise, however, than Fassbender. I’m at a loss if this performance will finally win the Oscar-nominee his deserved trophy, but I surely would not complain if it did. To take on the role of an enigma as deified as Jobs, and do so knowing you look nothing like him, is a feat I would have passed up - and one many big names, like DiCaprio and Christian Bale, did pass up. In hindsight, no one could have pulled off what Fassbender has done here. He has taken Jobs’s famously cold, oftentimes harsh personal skills and imbued them with a sense of vulnerability.
Nowhere is the more finely realized than in emotionally and artistically satisfying relationship between Jobs and his daughter Lisa. In the first act, Jobs cruelly rejects his paternity, even though a court mandated it so. This is a well documented part of his early life; thankfully, the filmmakers don’t gloss over it. Even after he seems to accept that Lisa is his own, he still always places her under his work: namely, making sure the mystique of Steve Jobs the Genius is not tarnished. As the film draws to an end, you see that Lisa was the focus of the film the whole time. After that, you want to immediately give the 121 minute another go. I would like to add that this is not a daunting thought, because the movie is practically over before you know it. In all seriousness, it feels like a short film.
That’s where the skills of Danny Boyle come in. The guy once made an exhilaratingly entertaining movie about a guy getting his arm stuck under a rock for 127 hours. In similar fashion, Boyle ends up being the perfect fit for Sorkin’s setting-challenged film. Sorkin may have imagined the story as a stage play (and it could easily be one), but Boyle makes it feel like a blockbuster more epic in emotional scope than anything we saw this Summer. I went in wishing David Fincher would have followed through on his initial connection to the film. Afterwards, I am glad he chose to go elsewhere. We have, after all, already seen Fincher do Sorkin with The Social Network. At times, Steve Jobs feels like a spiritual sequel to that slightly superior film, but Boyle always finds a way to make it his own. Steve Jobs should not be compared to The Social Network or anything else on Boyle, Fincher, or Sorkin’s resume. It is its own beast and unquestionably one of the best films of the year.