Director Danny Boyle’s new film, Steve Jobs, takes a warts and all look at the impresario’s life from the vantage point of three pivotal events in his career. Those events were the launch of the first Mac, the NEXT computer and then the iMac launch. The financial failures of those first two events did little to tone down the sense that Jobs had of himself and his omniscience and he comes across as a bit of a tortured soul.
Screenplay writer Aaron Sorkin’s influence can be felt in more than just the words in the film as the Sorkinisms just keep piling up. The famous walk and talk shot is used throughout, as is the uber intelligent and quick witted conversational style. The brain pool on display is never short of exceptional as are the acting chops.
Michael Fassbender as Jobs is fantastic as is Kate Winslet as Job’s right hand woman Joanna Hoffman. Winslet’s take on Hoffman with her strange accent and speaking cadence really brings alive one of the few people in Job’s life that had the measure of the man and his intellect.
For the army of Apple sycophants, this film will present some challenges as Jobs is presented as a deeply flawed human being. The representation here is that he is so driven that he is almost unaware that his humanity is slipping away. In real life those who knew the man can attest to his mellowing out and placing more importance on his family in the later phase of his life. That’s good because the period that this film focuses on makes it feel like it just wasn’t that much fun being Steve Jobs.
Rob Hudson
www.stevejobsmovie.com.au
