‘I’ ON CULTURE
Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle’s excellent new film Steve Jobs owes most of the credit to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. Rather than a real biography of the marketing genius, this is a theatrical tour de force showing three similar moments in a man’s life. The conversations are invented rather than having any real basis. Nothing much happens in the movie, but the people talking about “things” are great.
Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender), as most people know, invented the first Apple computer in his parents’ garage along with Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen). We barely see any of that… just a one-minute flashback. But by 1984, the mega-millionaire head of Apple Computer is getting ready for the meeting where he will introduce the new Macintosh computer. Things are crazy backstage. Jobs is cursing out Chief Engineer Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg) because the software to have the new computer actually say “hello,” is not working. He is terribly abusive.
At the same time, he is freaking out because Time magazine named the computer “Man of the Year,” not him. His longtime Head of Marketing Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet) tries to calm him without success. He has an argument with Wozniak, who simply wants an acknowledgement of the computing team behind the Apple II, forerunner to the Macintosh. He has a searching discussion with his new Chief Executive Officer John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), a sort of father figure to him, about his feelings of having been adopted.
To make matters worse, his 5-year-old daughter Lisa (played by three different actresses), whom he refuses to acknowledge, is there with her slightly nuts mother Chrisann (Katherine Waterston). Chrisann tells Jobs that she and Lisa have applied for welfare since, although a judge has ordered Jobs to pay child support, it is only for a bit over $300 a month (Jobs is worth over $400 million at this point). Jobs is abusive but then orders Lisa to play with the Mac computer to keep her occupied, and when she actually on her own uses MacPaint to do a design, shows her how to save it and quietly agrees to pay more money. In real life, he began paying when Lisa was 3.
The second act takes place five years later, in 1989, as Jobs, having been fired from Apple, brings the NeXT computer to a convention. Hoffman is still trying to intercede for him with others and still failing. He fights with the same people he fought with before. There is another argument with Lisa, now 9, although the two have a discussion of the two versions of the song Both Sides Now and how there can be two versions of anything. Since the second version of the song was actually made in 2000, this could never have happened. Also, none of the men he had the conversations with were at the event in real life.
In the third act, Jobs, back as head of Apple, is about to introduce the iMac. He still is a jerk, however. He still fights with everyone (except Hoffman). But she demands he work things out with Lisa, whose Harvard tuition he has withheld because he is angry at her mother. Then again, in real life, she had been living with him since she was 13. The film shows them working things out. The film ends on an iconic note with Jobs bathed in white light as he is about to change history.
One issue with the film is that nothing really happens. These are three different acts, all of which take place backstage at big events. Things are discussed and rehashed. But Sorkin’s script does it brilliantly. From all reports, none of the conversations ever really happened, but Sorkin manages to expose an enormous number of feelings and issues with his exceptional script. Jobs comes across like one of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes: brilliant, a visionary, yet with such incredibly bad social skills that he offends everyone around him.
Fassbender gives a superb performance as Jobs. From the first act, where we see the younger Jobs with his free-flowing long hair, through the short-haired iconic look we saw in his later years, he avoids an impersonation as he seems to have found the essential Jobs, at least the one called for in this film. Winslet is a great foil for him; she never backs down as she tries to keep him on track. Her scenes begging Jobs to take care of his child are lovely. Rogen, Stuhlbarg, Waterston and Daniels also are really well-done, and the three young actresses playing Lisa are fine.
This is a fascinating movie, more of the mind than for any action. It is a series of discussions, most generally done as Jobs and others walk backstage. It will not make a fortune, and not everyone will like it. But it is a wonderfully theatrical experience with a fabulous cast and one of the best scripts in recent memory.
