13.8.23
Of all the films associated with Aaron Sorkin’s breakneck dialogue, Steve Jobs is by far my favourite. It also makes for a great double bill with 2023’s Blackberry which I watched a couple of weeks before rewatching this in December, as I have been holding back from reviewing this for a while.
At its best, this is Danny Boyle’s attempt at a riveting character study, anchored by Sorkin’s rapid-fire screenplay and a superb ensemble. The script crackles with energy which still impresses me, considering the subject matter of a man setting up for a presentation three times is far from exciting at first glance. As we follow Jobs across these product launches, witnessing his complex relationships with colleagues like Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen) and Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), we soon begin to realise that this icon of popular tech may be seen as a great man despite some questionable morals and suggestions of misogyny and self-aggrandisation. Michael Fassbender is simply brilliant as Jobs, capturing his visionary genius and single-minded drive, yet not shying away from depicting these less sympathetic traits several times over the different flashpoints.
Feeling more like a stage play, the three-act structure allows us an intimate look at Jobs’ life over a decade, although only teasing us with the product launches and instead focuses more on callbacks to the past, key interactions with his daughter, and most pleasing to my taste, pointed discourse with Jeff Daniels as Apple CEO John Sculley. Here we see the script come alive, harkening to an intense stage drama, and Boyle embraces the material with kinetic direction and visual punctuation, like the pulsating electronic score underscoring Act One. For those who connect with the subject matter, the first-rate performances and writing make Steve Jobs an engaging character study from start to finish. Daniels nearly steals the film as Sculley to be honest, going toe-to-toe with Fassbender’s commanding lead performance.
Steve Jobs shows us an imperfect visionary who revolutionised everyday consumer technology, but often struggled in his personal life. Sorkin’s script delves into thought-provoking themes about the costs of genius and the complex power dynamics of business and creativity. With its propulsive energy and a powerhouse, near-career best showing by Fassbender (I think his role in Shame is truly his best), Steve Jobs soars right up until the energised, massively satisfying ending. Steve Jobs the man was clearly a man of prescience, but also deeply flawed, and contemptible to some. ‘Poorly made’? Well, Steve Jobs might have been in terms of his morality and parenting, but the film certainly isn’t.