3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.23.15
The ensemble cast is strong,
impeccably directed and well-suited to each role.
The dialog is rat-a-tat
enthralling: classic Aaron Sorkin arguments and badinage, with verbal zingers and
snarky rejoinders landing like physical blows, recipients wincing in pain or
retreating behind wary glances. It’s the stuff that made The Social Network and TV’s West Wing and The Newsroom so spellbinding: the intelligent,
sharp-edged and fast-paced discourse that we’re neither clever enough, nor
quick-witted enough, to deliver in real life.
It feels more like an intimate,
minimalist stage play, and in fact Sorkin has structured it that way, with
three distinct acts. I was reminded, more than once, of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, made into a similarly mesmerizing 1992 film.
But those characters were
fictitious, if familiar archetypes that we’d likely find in the rapacious
atmosphere of a high-end, nail-the-deal-no-matter-what real estate office.
Steve Jobs, in contrast,
profiles the actual Apple guru, with ample attention paid to the close advisors
circling his incandescent star. (He doesn’t appear to have any actual friends.)
And not once, not for a second,
did I feel that Sorkin and director Danny Boyle had come anywhere close to
capturing the actual Steve Jobs. This relentlessly distracting fact ruins the
entire film. Although clearly a sort of “truthiness” — the script is adapted
from Walter Isaacson’s thoroughly researched biography of Jobs — this drama
seems to exist in a parallel universe where Sorkin has indulged in his own
myth-making.
Goodness knows, Jobs was highly
skilled at crafting and stage-managing the persona he displayed in public. And,
in the interest of full disclosure, Sorkin has described this film as an
“impressionistic portrait” of Jobs: an abstraction concocted to surround the
Apple guru with the same six characters, at three crucial points in his career,
and let them “bang on each other.”
A “heightened version of real
life,” Boyle adds, in the press notes.
Balderdash. Those quotes sound
like a defensive excuse: an effort to get ahead of the negative publicity destined
to emerge — and it definitely has — after Jobs’ actual associates begin to
complain, quite noisily, that Sorkin’s so-called portrait is pure hooey.
The degree to which this does or
doesn’t prove off-putting will depend on each viewer’s allegiance to truth,
and/or a sense of the real-world Jobs. Taken purely on its own merits, Boyle
and Sorkin’s film deserves all the descriptive accolades cited in my opening
paragraphs; it is riveting.
But even if we give Boyle and
Sorkin the benefit of that particular doubt, we cannot escape one glaringly
obvious problem: The Steve Jobs depicted here is a relentless, abusive,
unapologetic bully. Michael Fassbender’s nuanced performance notwithstanding,
there’s no trace of the persuasive, charismatic futurist who inspired and
demanded greatness from his associates and staff.
This big-screen Jobs is just a
cruel bastard. He couldn’t inspire anybody to change a light bulb, let alone
deliver the miracles that routinely emerged from Apple. And all viewers, even
clueless tech luddites, will understand the utter wrongness of this dynamic.
That said, one cannot argue with
Sorkin’s clever narrative structure.
The film’s three acts are set
during the 40 minutes prior to three product launches: the Macintosh in 1984,
the NeXTcube in ’88, and the iMac in ’98. Each act unfolds pretty much in real
time, as an obviously harried Jobs — micromanaging each presentation for
maximum impact — is counseled, hassled, cajoled and attacked by...
• Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet),
the gatekeeper and healer forever encouraging Jobs to be his best possible
self, and running constant interference in an effort to ensure as much;
• Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen),
Jobs’ longtime partner — to a point — and the quieter tech guy who did most
(all?) of the early work, while Jobs skillfully built a market for their fledgling
products;
• John Sculley (Jeff Daniels),
the former Pepsi-Cola CEO enticed by Jobs to run Apple in 1983, who must make
some difficult decisions in the wake of the disastrous Macintosh launch a year
later;
• Andy Hertzfeld (Michael
Stuhlbarg), a genius computer engineer and part of the original Macintosh team,
whose role here is primarily as blunt truth-teller;
• Chrisann Brennan (Katherine
Waterston), Jobs’ former high school girlfriend and mother of his first child,
who is forced into the role of hectoring, frustrated tiger-mother when he
denies paternity and refuses to take responsibility for the girl; and
• Lisa (Makenzie Moss, Ripley
Sobo and Perla Haney-Jardine), the child in question, whom we observe as she
grows into a young adult.
Everybody is excellent, and most
of the actors likely were encouraged to avoid blatant imitations of their
real-world counterparts. Rogen is the obvious exception; he delivers a dead-on impersonation
that’s almost spooky at times. Wozniak also functions as the conscience that
Jobs clearly lacks, with “Woz” forever trying to get his colleague (and
friend?) to be a better person. Rogen gets the best heartfelt lines, all of
which he delivers with earnest sincerity. My favorite: “You can be decent and
gifted at the same time.”
As depicted here, Jobs believes
otherwise; creatively impassioned artists should answer to nobody, accepting no
compromise en route to fulfilling their vision. There’s some truth to that
belief, and other trendsetters have been just that ruthless, while often
overlooking and/or belittling the legions of people who brought them to fame.
(Consider the now-iconic Walt Disney, who cheerfully collected all those
Academy Awards for work done by others.)
Fassbender projects and
exemplifies precisely that sort of obsessive fervor. The trouble is that he
feels more corporate than creative; he belongs in Wall Street pitch meetings,
exhorting banks to gouge their customers in ever-more creative ways. There’s no
sense of the laid-back California cool — the jeans and T-shirt simplicity —
that typified Jobs’ messianic qualities, which in turn inspired the adoring
co-workers and end-users (i.e. you and I) who bought his products.
Or didn’t, in some cases, which
may come as a surprise to those less familiar with Jobs’ career arc. The
initial Macintosh was an overpriced dud that left the company limping along on
sales of the “old” Apple II; the NeXTcube was an even bigger flop — little more
than a carefully crafted hoax, actually — that Jobs concocted after being
pushed out of Apple.
On a more personal note, his
encounters with Chrisann are horrific, his casual verbal abuse landing like
physical blows on the poor woman. Waterston cannily shades the role: On the one
hand, she’s clearly the injured party ... but, at the same time, there’s an
undertone of grasping calculation that makes her less than wholly sympathetic. Her
arguments with Fassbender are so brutal that they’re exhausting, Waterston
making good on the promise she showed with her equally striking work in last
year’s Inherent Vice.
Daniels has become an
impressively versatile character actor with a flair for roles that demand
complexity and compassion in the midst of “hard choices” that Must Be Made For
The Greater Good. (Consider his similar top-dog part in The Martian.) Sorkin
crafts Sculley as the father-figure that Jobs lacked in his own life; this
develops into a relationship of mutual respect that, in turn, becomes tainted
when Shakespearean-level “betrayal” becomes necessary.
We grieve for Sculley, as this
“foster father” is angrily cast aside by the frequently petulant Jobs ... who
(of course) is never, ever wrong.
Winslet’s Joanna — forever
harried and hurried, and always at Jobs’ heels — is the long-suffering saint:
the one person who clearly decided, long ago, that she’ll tolerate all of her
boss’ wretched excess, in order to remain trusted and valued. She blinks off
his stinging rebukes, Winslet’s face nonetheless displaying the pain of each
cutting remark (which, needless to say, Jobs never notices). Ultimately, she
balks not at anything he says or does to her, but at his thoughtless cruelty
toward an innocent “outsider.”
That would be Lisa, whose scenes
with her father — at these three formative moments in her own life — are this
film’s sole emotional respite. Fassbender’s work with these three actresses is
fascinating; it’s like we can see Jobs learning how to be a parent, one
grinding act or remark at a time. He simply doesn’t know how to respond to
love, and of course nothing is more pure than the uncomplicated worship of an
affectionate child.
These moments are heartbreakers.
The various verbal scuffles are
choreographed superbly by Boyle, editor Elliot Graham and cinematographer Alwin
H. Küchler. The result isn’t quite as breathtaking as Alejandro González
Iñárritu’s “continuous” tracking camera in last year’s Birdman, but the
impact is similar; we can’t help being impressed by how everything is so
precisely coordinated.
Ultimately, though, it may be too
soon for this film; perhaps distance will allow it to gain in stature, as Jobs’
actual career is buried beneath ever-expanding legend. Over-exposure also is an
issue, with this quasi-biopic coming on the heels of 2013’s far less
accomplished Jobs, wherein Ashton Kutcher gave us an equally unlikable
genius.
We’re obviously fascinated by the
man ... to which I’d suggest reading Isaacson’s book. Cinematic flash aside, it
seems a far more honest and even-handed depiction.
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