STEVE JOBS – The Review

By Cate Marquis

With Danny Boyle’s  STEVE JOBS, there will now be three films on the late founder of Apple Computers, the man who put portable computers in eveyone’s hand, as this film notes at one point. A few years back, there was the biopic JOBS starring Ashton Kutcher, who has a striking resemblance to Jobs and this year, an excellent documentary by the Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney, called “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine.” Steve Jobs is a man whose fans admire him with almost cult-like adoration (and just to be clear, this writer is not among them), yet none of these films have presented him in a very flattering light- least of all Boyle’s film.

Director Boyle’s STEVE JOBS is not a biography, and Aaron Sorkin’s script does not even focus on Job’s two most significant contributions to the world, making computers personal and then putting computer-based devices like the iPod and iPhone in everyone’s pocket. Instead, STEVE JOBS focuses is on his treatment of people, particularly his young daughter Lisa, during a kind of low point in Jobs’ career. Unlike THE SOCIAL NETWORK, Boyle’s film seems to assume that viewers already know a great deal about Jobs and his contributions to the world. If you are interested in getting a fuller picture of who Steve Jobs was, as a public figure, tech game-changer or as a person, Gibney’s documentary is a better choice.

STEVE JOBS covers the  years from Apple’s famous 1984 Superbowl ad, which won awards but left viewers unsure what was being advertised, through his firing as the head of the company he founded, his faltering launch of a new company Next, and then his return to Apple and the launch of the iMac. The film ends before the introduction of Apple’s most iconic innovations – the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad.  The film covers the least productive part of Job’s career but that it is not the film’s point anyway. The major focus of the film is Job’s treatment  – mistreatment, really – of people around him, particularly his daughter Lisa, whose parentage he denied despite a court-ordered blood test, in the years from when she was five until age 19. The film also deals with Job’s treatment of all the people working for him around him generally, particularly Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, the real programming genius behind the company, and whose products Jobs, a marketing and image-making genius, promoted and seemed to take credit for. Jobs’ magical, brilliant marketing captured the public imagination, and made them both wealthy, but Jobs also gave the impression he was the tech genius behind them as well when he was not.

Michael Fassbender plays Jobs, with a bristling energy that radiates off the screen. The film begins at the production launch of the Mac computer, one of three product launches in the film. As Jobs prepares for the debut, the team is frantic because the computer is not actually ready and is balking at doing the one thing Jobs deems critical to his presentation – saying “hello” on cue. Backstage, Jobs’ ex-girlfriend Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston) is there with their five-year-old daughter Lisa (Makenzie Moss), asking for the financial support that the court ordered following a paternity test and also informing him they are now on welfare. Jobs berates her and screams like a madman when she refers to Lisa as his daughter. His treatment of Chrisann is appalling but his treatment of the little girl is worse. When Lisa asks the man she is not allowed to call father if the precursor of the Mac, named Lisa, was named for her, Jobs coldly denies it. Jobs’ nastiness is not just limited to his ex-girlfriend but extends to his confrontation with his longtime friend and co-founder of their company, Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen) who very modestly asks Jobs to publicly acknowledge the tech team that worked on the Apple II, the computer that had been paying the company bills for years. Jobs stubbornly refuses.

This rest of the film follows this pattern, with the egotistical Jobs ripping through various people around him. As one character points out, being a genius and being a human being are not mutually exclusive, although maybe not if you are Steve Jobs. The acting in this film is outstanding, with a cadre of battered people surrounding this massive ego. Fassbender’s performance is electric and likely to gain hims an Oscar nomination. Kate Winslet plays long-suffering Joanna Hoffman, Jobs’ assistant who has the thankless (literally) job of following him around and trying to keep him on track. Michael Stuhlbarg plays programmer Andy Hertzfeld, whom Jobs threatens in the minutes before the product launch. Lisa is played by different actresses at ages 5, 9 and 19, Moss (age 5), Ripley Sobo (age 9) and Perla Haney-Jardine (age 19), and all do well. Curiously, the only person that Jobs treats with any respect is John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), the CEO who took over Apple after Jobs, although Sculley comes in for some tongue-lashing too.

However, as a piece of cinema, the film is brilliantly made, with striking photography and impressive performances. Shots are beautifully framed and one sequence, where we move back and forth in time in recapping the events between Sculley and Jobs is inspired. Seth Rogen as Wozniak is amazing and delivers one particular speech directed at Jobs that should garner him an Oscar nod on its own. All the acting is strong, and is a major strength of the film. The structure of the film is masterful but throughout, the one question that most likely will pop into one’s head is why – why anyone would tolerate being around this monster. For an answer to that, audience’s can look to Alex Gibney’s insightful documentary – you won’t find the answer in this film.

STEVE JOBS is no SOCIAL NETWORK, despite its polished production and wonderful performances, and does not offer the same kind of insights on this culturally significant person and his work.

STEVE JOBS is playing in theaters now

OVERALL RATING: 3 OUT OF 5 STARS