About midway through watching Steve Jobs, I asked myself if I really liked this movie. That’s not something which typically happens for me, and I imagine the same is true for you.
A good or great movie pulls you in and you’re not thinking about whether or not you like it, because you’re already enjoying it. A bad one often lets you know pretty quickly that it’s not very good, keeps you at a distance and feels like a chore to watch.
Sometimes you’re not sure, of course. You have to see the work in its entirety. Maybe the ending redeems the movie. Perhaps it ruins your overall perception. Other times, initial feelings aside, a film doesn’t make itself clear to you until you fully process it afterwards. Maybe you have talk it out with a friend or colleague, or sort it out in your mind during the drive home.
(Of course, there are also occasions when your mind doesn’t let you escape with a movie. Maybe you’re preoccupied about something from work or upcoming commitments. You’re already in a bad mood going in because of a stressful day, you were late for the show, or life just won’t leave you alone for a couple of hours.)
Yet I’m not sure any of the above applied during Steve Jobs. It’s unquestionably well made.
As is almost always the case with something written by Aaron Sorkin, the dialogue and pacing feels energized. The energy of the characters, how they’re talking and what they’re saying, is absolutely riveting. There’s never anything else like it. Sorkin’s scenes are tennis matches and boxing slugfests. They’re raging currents and aural beauty.
Danny Boyle’s accompanying visuals do far more than just try to keep up with Sorkin’s dialogue. They create their own imagery, setting the proper mood and scenery, yet also representing the frame of mind of the title character. Sometimes, it’s frenzied. Other times, it’s calm. In certain scenes, the colors are rich, even intense. In others, the images are stark, almost sleek, resembling the modern design of the products for which Apple is known.
If you know much about Jobs’ life and career — from the Walter Isaacson biography this movie is based on or a documentary such as Alex Gibney’s Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine — your rational mind may occasionally remind you of the various things that Sorkin and Boyle aren’t covering.
For instance, nothing about Jobs’ involvement with Pixar is mentioned here, even though that falls within the timeline (1984 to 1998) Sorkin establishes in his script. There’s an allusion to the iPod toward the end of the film, which may be more to indicate that Jobs has finally fulfilled his ambitions for the personal computer and is ready to take on his next challenge.
Yet considering how the iPod and iTunes changed the music industry and arguably saved Apple, shouldn’t that have been included? (Interestingly, Gibney’s documentary doesn’t cover that territory either.) Never mind that the iPhone has completely changed the role technology plays in our lives, our interactions with each other as a society and how we consume media.
Sorkin and Boyle are certainly interested in what the man created, as that defined him to a large extent. The film is structured in three parts, each of them centered around the launch of a particular computer. First, the Macintosh. Then, the NeXt. And finally, the iMac.
Jobs’ desire to make the Apple computer a closed system that isn’t compatible with other computers, nor suited to the tinkering favored by many hardcore users, is a metaphor for the man. His vision isn’t open to other interpretations. He doesn’t work well with others.A key difference between Jobs and Apple co-creator Steve Wozniak is that one views the Macintosh as a work of art, the other a work of technology. As demonstrated in a scene with Jobs, his estranged daughter and the Macintosh, it doesn’t matter what the computer can do; it’s what a person does with it.
The why isn’t as important as the what. That’s how Jobs felt about the technology he envisioned. That’s what Sorkin and Boyle feel about Jobs in telling this story.
It’s not about historical accuracy. It doesn’t matter whether CEO John Sculley was actually involved with Apple at a particular time depicted in the film. What matters is the ideological clash between he and Jobs, how both men needed each other, yet ultimately couldn’t work together because of how they viewed business.
It doesn’t matter that Michael Fassbender looks nothing like Steve Jobs, especially during the earlier points of his life when the man favored a counter-culture, stick-it-to-the-man sensibility, resembling a boy trying to look like an adult by putting on a suit and tie. Fassbender most resembles Jobs in his signature glasses, jeans and turtleneck ensemble, which is surely appropriate since that’s the phase of his life when the man was most comfortable with himself, when the person and image he’s created (as Wozniak points out in a later scene) is most clearly defined.
What matters is that Fassbender embodies Jobs, his ferocious intelligence, vision and impatience. He captures the inherent and outward conflict of the charisma displayed by a man with an enterprising spirit, along with the arrogance of someone who feels everyone needs to see the world the same way as he does, who either fits into his world or doesn’t. Jobs is both inspiring and repugnant. He’s an asshole. Yet look at what he accomplished by being that way. Could he have achieved his goals and become an iconic figure otherwise?
Steve Jobs isn’t a biography. In interviews, such as this one with Charlie Rose, Sorkin has explained that he didn’t want to make a conventional biopic, a genre which had become its own cliche until filmmakers realized that telling a life story wasn’t as important as focusing on a certain time or event that best explained or defined the person. He wanted to create an impression of the man, convey a particular interpretation, rather than a historical account. So while some may take issue with how factual this movie is, it’s not an inaccurate portrayal.
I think that’s why I wasn’t quite clear on whether or not I liked Steve Jobs as I was watching it. I was trying to figure out what it was doing, what it was. But once I just forgot about all that and appreciated the spectacle Sorkin and Boyle created, none of that other stuff was important. Sorkin’s dialogue is typically fantastic, brought to life by a tremendous cast of actors and a director all doing their best work.
To me, the best way to think of this movie is as a play. And really, it shouldn’t be a surprise that this is how Steve Jobs works best since Sorkin considers himself a playwright at heart, and that comes out in each of his TV shows and movies. If you were watching a stage production of Jobs’ story, you likely wouldn’t care whether or not the actor resembles the person he’s playing. The historical accuracy of scenes wouldn’t be important. The staging, production and presentation take precedence. Everything ultimately comes together as a piece of theater. And Steve Jobs is brilliant theater.
