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.
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| Struggling to find some way to connect with the young daughter whose paternity he denies, Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) encourages Lisa (Makenzie Moss) to play with a spanking-new Macintosh computer. "You can't break it," he promises. |
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.
• Buy Blu-Ray: 
, 
), adapting Vikas Swarup's novel Q&A, trigger every human reaction possible as their film proceeds.