[REVIEW] Steve Jobs

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Aaron Sorkin must have salivated when he was asked to write the Steve Jobs biopic, but the result will leave those who pay to see it with a dry taste in their mouths.

Following the heels of The Social Network, Sorkin was on top of the world and he tries to replicate the same magic with Danny Boyle (127 Hours, Trainspotting) directing instead of David Fincher. Much of the equation remains the same in Steve Jobs: the focus is still an ornery male “genius” who manages to alienate those around him, but the great man-history building feels stale this time around.

Renowned as the prodigal son that returned to helm Apple during the glory years when the company churned out the iMac, iPod, Macbook, iPhone and iPad, Jobs’ penchant for success seems unrivalled, but so was his capacity for hurting people to get what he wanted.

All this and more was already known to those who read Walter Issacson’s biography of the late Jobs, but here we find it overwrought in typical Sorkin manner. If it weren’t for Michael Fassbender’s intense display as the titular character and Kate Winslet’s captivating transformation into Joanna Hoffman, the film would have little to be proud of.

Famed for his work on shows like The West Wing and The Newsroom, Sorkin has a penchant for tightly wound characters and dialogue that leave actors and audience alike very little time to breathe. Such verbal acrobatics are seen here, but they are incredibly dizzying within the confines of a two-hour movie. Whether it was Sorkin’s intent for such quick-fire interactions to emulate what it was to work with Jobs, I don’t know, but something tells me it’s just Sorkin deriving pleasure from cringe-worthy one-liners from the film, like: “Musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra,” and “If a fire causes a stampede to the unmarked exits, it’ll have been well worth it for those who survive.”

The claustrophobic effect is emphasized by how the movie is divided into three acts, all taking place in the forty minute-span before Jobs is to introduce a new product, and all involving the same rotating cast of characters: his daughter Lisa, her mother Chrisann, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, right-hand woman Joanna Hoffman, Apple developer Andy Hertzfeld and former Apple CEO John Sculley. The focus on the film is not so much on the products — Boyle and Sorkin are content to cut immediately and flash ahead whenever Jobs actually sets foot on stage. Instead of the products, the focus remains on Jobs and the conflicts that exist between him and his close acquaintances, and this tension is manipulated to the fullest. Too often, like when the camera flashes back and forth from Jobs to John Sculley (played by Sorkin favourite, Jeff Daniels) prior to the launch of the NeXT computer, this manipulation can prove to be too heavy-handed and leaves the viewer feeling as if they’re having their arm twisted.

The attitude that films like Steve Jobs and The Social Network propagate is that “changing the world” is more important than having the basic decency to value the lives of those around you. While the events in the film are heavily fictionalized, events like Jobs purporting that 28 percent of the American male population could have fathered his daughter Lisa with his girlfriend at the time, Chrisann Brennan, are true and pretty damning on their own. The fact that events like Jobs denying paternity and refusing to offer any monetary support are tempered by Sorkin one-liners rub further salt to the already gaping wound.

The only positive I can point to in Sorkin’s treatment of women is the fact that they are actually given screen time for once. Jobs’ head of marketing Joanna Hoffman (Winslet), mockingly referred to as his “work-wife,” is always on hand to berate Jobs to “make things right with Lisa,” but that just renders Jobs’ eventual attempt at reconciliation all the more laughable. That a man so endowed with the drive to succeed couldn’t bring himself to repair the bridges he had personally razed to the ground speaks to his character. While Hoffman admirably stands up to him throughout the film, she is only condescendingly asked to use a vague Eastern European wisdom to help fix Jobs’ relationship with Lisa.

The only moment where Boyle gets a chance to capture a genuine moment is in the final scene between Jobs and Lisa. But even then, the script falls flat in an attempt to wrap things together too neatly. Instead of letting the rawness of the scene carry it, Sorkin sneaks in a premature reference to the iPod that brings everything crashing back down to Earth. Then comes an embrace scored by The Maccabees’ “Grew Up At Midnight,” the type of indie-rock song that weaker films drift to when they want to evoke the sort of emotion that their own work lacks. In the end, the catharthis that the film peddles is shallow.

Save your money and try to “think different”-ly than Jobs. Don’t be an asshole.

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