BY MARK CERULLI
Full disclosure: I’m a Mac evangelist and have been since the
1980s. (The boxy Macintosh Plus was the
first model I used.) I idolized Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and this brilliant
movie from director Danny Boyle doesn’t change that. What it does do is explain Jobs as much as a
force of nature like Steve Jobs can be explained. The film, written by Aaron Sorkin, tells
Jobs’ story through three pivotal product launches –1984’s Macintosh, the
ill-fated Next in 1988 and his triumphant 1998 return with the revolutionary
iMac. Most of the action takes place in
the tension-filled backstage crucible before each event, where Jobs terrorizes
staffers and programmers and deals with the inconvenient truth of a very
dependent ex-girlfriend (played by Sam Waterston’s daughter, Katherine) who is
also the mother of his child. A child he
refuses to acknowledge, conclusive paternity test or no.
Michael Fassbender is
nothing short of amazing as Jobs, a man so convinced of his own rightness that
he can’t acknowledge a shred of humanity or empathy. Although Fassbender doesn’t look like the
mercurial tech rockstar, he’s able to channel him. Kate Winslett turns in another stellar
performance as Jobs’ harried marketing chief, the one woman he does confide in
– as much as Jobs was capable of confiding. Seth Rogan puts his usual stoner persona aside
as the real brains behind Apple, co-founder Steve Wozniak. “Woz†is seemingly Jobs only friend but his
relentless perfectionism pushes their relationship to the limit.
Flashbacks illustrate
major points in Jobs’ career –the birth of Apple in a silicon valley garage, wooing
Pepsi head John Scully (Jeff Daniels) to be Apple’s CEO, and the crushing
boardroom battle where the indispensible Jobs suddenly found out that he was
totally dispensable. Along the way Jobs
hints at the reasons behind his iron will and propensity to lash out at anyone
who doesn’t live up to his impossible standards – rejection by his first set of
adoptive parents who literally gave him back. Instead of coming to grips with it through therapy or discussion, he
walled it off, along with most human emotions.
Cinematographer Alwin H. Küchler’s
tight camerawork is centered on the actors moving through various backstage
settings as the product launch tensions ramp up and ever so slightly, Jobs
acknowledges the fatherhood he’s denied. Sorkin’s Oscar-bait dialogue crackles throughout. For example…
Jobs
to a stressed-out engineer: “You had three weeks, the universe was
created in a third of that.â€
The
stressed-out engineer: “Well, someday you’ll have to tell us how
you did it.â€
Because Apple products are
so ubiquitous and four years after his death, Jobs has passed into legend; we
think we know him. We think he’s
ours. But behind the iconic products,
there was an intense, ruthless and occasionally cruel man. This film helps explain why and does what
Jobs himself never could – it helps humanize him.
Steve Jobs opens October 9th
from Universal Pictures.