'Steve Jobs' Review

Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs

How does one depict someone so complicated, emotionally alienated, and complex? Well, a keen attempt was made in Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs, written by Aaron Sorkin based on the book by Walter Isaacson. It begins at one of three grandiose product launches for Apple painting a portrait of the man behind these Apple machines and compositely crafted instruments, exposing his peculiar sensitivities, his light hearted humor, and his completely diabolical, tyrannical egomania. Yep - he wasn’t painted in the most positive light, but it is certainly within a very raw and real one.

The initial scene in which we meet Jobs, played by Michael Fassbender, is interfused with a plethora of zigzagging story lines and metaphoric portraits, really setting the tone for each of his launches and the various internal, protruding issues he is forced to deal with prior to each of his performances. How he reacts to these conflicting struggles really provides the viewer a greater idea of who Jobs is than the singular, overlapping issues brought to him themselves, and we see his generous and selfish sides juxtaposed to one another like yin and yang.

The most pressing story line remains within Jobs' relationship with ex lover Chrisann Brennan, played by Katherine Waterston, and their child Lisa, played by Makenzie Moss and Perla Haney-Jardine. His communication, or lack thereof, with these particular characters exposes certain sides to Jobs that are sometimes selfish, sometimes heartwarming, and often times horrendously narrow-minded. The viewer desperately wants to like Jobs, especially as much as we like him in the inspirational messages and quotes that famously survived him, but it becomes difficult when he refuses to pay child and life support to the mother of his child. At the final product launch, Jobs, whose worth at this point exceeds hundreds of millions of dollars, and his initial refusal to pay for Lisa's tuition after her acceptance to Harvard University makes us want to reach through the cinematic screen and shake him - just as we do our iPhones when they're not working properly - and make him do what we want correctly, appropriately, and efficiently. (Just pay her damn tuition, Jobs - we want to say) Finally, he has a change of heart and offers to pay his daughter's tuition, making us love the dear, proverbial Apple product we see in Jobs again.

Another dynamic scrupulously surveyed in Steve Jobs is Jobs' relationship with his colleagues, primarily with Joanna Hoffman, played by Kate Winslet and Steve Wozniak, portrayed by Seth Rogen. In one of the most intimate and heart wrenching scenes, Jobs likens himself to a composer, for whom all of his colleagues are artists playing instruments. He claims that artists play instruments, the composer plays the artists - and Jobs, himself, is the composer. Thus another scene in which he damningly subordinates his co-workers, each of whom he would be nothing without. You see, in this particular portrait, he isn't the most likable guy, but one could not help but love his urge to bring about the best in people, perfection in another, and his drive to build a smoothly running, well oiled machine in Apple. Though one may hate him, we cannot help but respect his ambition as so depicted in this feature. He was the one who called all the shots, even if he wasn't the one pulling the trigger, in a way. Yes - he is very much like an Apple product himself, and one we want to work so badly in a vein sculpted to our own needs, likes, and dislikes- and, in the film, we find ourselves playing around with him, figuring out the various applications present within his mind that mere humans need an iPhone to download. And, even in his moments of thorough emotional abandonment and appalling disrespect of those around him, we come to hold on to him as though we would our own Apple devices without wanting to return the product. Yes, Steve Jobs is very much an extension of his products themselves as much as they are an extension of him, and one cannot help but remain fascinated with this binary relationship.