Since Steve Jobs’ death in 2011, we have entered a post-Jobsian landscape, where films such as “Jobs” (2013) and “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine” (2015) are presented like fleurs du mal upon his gravestone, simultaneously tarnishing and mythologizing Jobs’ status in technology. Each director aims his cinematic arrow at Jobs’ Achilles’ heel, his supposed inhuman side, to portray the brute behind the black turtlenecks. Based off Walter Isaacson’s 2011 eponymous biography, Academy-Award winning director Danny Boyle’s 2015 biopic “Steve Jobs” adds yet another conflicted chapter to the Jobs canon, peeking behind the Wizard of Cupertino’s curtain to explore the backstage drama of this luminary in the rimless glasses.
Structured like a drama in three acts, the film opens on Jobs (Michael Fassbender) and fellow Macintosh member Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet) preparing to pitch the first Macintosh personal computer in 1984. The computer glitches and refuses to say “Hello” in an apt metaphor for its creator — a revolutionary who continually denies others’ humanity. The computer cannot be fixed, but neither can Jobs, who demands the computer say “Hello.” His obstinacy sets off a firework display of dialogue that is typical of the film’s Academy-Award winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin , as Jobs bulldozes his colleagues into cooperation. Jobs becomes both Job and God as he derails the production with his absurd demands and only succeeds by threatening his staff into obedience.
Acts II and III follow the same architecture as the first and trace Jobs’ firing and ultimate fated return to Apple. Upon the failure of the Macintosh and Jobs’ removal from Apple, the film moves forward five years into Act II, where Jobs prepares his presentation of the NeXT, an expensive computer aimed at the education market. After NeXT proves a commercial flop, Jobs returns to Apple and saves them from insolvency with the introduction of the iMac in 1998. Note to all iJunkies — this is more vintage Jobs and precedes Apple’s explosion with the iPod and iPhone, capturing Jobs when he was still vulnerably human.
Much like “Birdman” (2014), the film tracks the chaotic, entropic warpath of a man hell-bent on realizing his visions. Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), the primary engineer of the Apple I and II computers, becomes Jobs’ superego, his unwanted past, the voice of humanity in teddy bear form, and his double that he must erase in true Dostoevskian style. In addition, Jobs denies the pleas of his partner Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston) and their child Lisa for financial support, as well as his paternity of Lisa, whom he claims could be the child of 28 percent of American men to Time magazine .Often railed as a sexist, Sorkin finally delivers a triple play of fierce females, seemingly the only ones able to temper Jobs’ ego. Adopted himself, the possible cause of his quasi-Napoleon complex, Jobs seems desperate to escape family ties and love, the unwanted accessories to his perfect machinery. Indeed, Jobs seeks to shuffle off his mortal coil, the one inefficiency in his operating system.
The film ultimately becomes an autopsy, peeking behind the glittering surface and smooth edges of Jobs’ mythic status to reveal the cold, inhuman hardwiring underneath. But Boyle prescribes no final judgment and instead forces us to answer the questions — can we separate the man from his craft? Will we soon forget those trampled while we tap away at our iPhones?
These recent Jobs films try to shake us awake as we finger our iDevices, our black monoliths — much like the apes from “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) — and recognize the diabolism behind their HAL-esque creator. It seems as if Sorkin decided to tackle the next tech-Goliath after Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network” (2012). Who’s next, Bill Gates? But no matter the shaming, this senate of filmmakers cannot stab this Silicon Valley Caesar, whose image is strengthened with every iMessage and iCal reminder we receive. Thankfully, these attempted takedowns are pre-programmed for silver screens, and Sorkin condenses the lightning smarts of Jobs and his followers into a presto package of dizzying and electrifying drama.
Rating: 8.5/10
“Steve Jobs” showed at a sneak preview in Spaulding Auditorium last Saturday at 7 p.m.
