Steve Jobs was a minimalist. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, on the other hand, is quite the opposite.
In the Danny Boyle-directed “Steve Jobs,” Sorkin takes a man who was famous for clean lines and curt responses and places him in the midst of a cleverly loquacious world. Michael Fassbender’s Jobs roams the halls behind the scenes of his product launches, delivering intense, long-winded explanations for why he needs the corners of an aesthetically simple computer to be exactly 90 degrees. The juxtaposition of minimalism and Sorkin-ism is striking, but it makes sense — the film’s complexities reflect those of its subject.
This theme of moral complexity persists throughout. The film is written in three parts: it begins with the moments before the 1984 launch of the Apple Macintosh, moves onto the 1988 launch of the NeXT “Cube” and then jumps forward 10 years to the launch of the Apple iMac. In each act, Jobs juggles the demands of his volatile career with his struggle to accept and fulfill his responsibilities as a father. And to the pleasure of the audience, he also consistently makes amusing comments such as, “God sent his only son on a suicide mission, but we like him anyway because he made trees.”
Equipped with the diverse abilities of portraying a simultaneously flawed and brilliant man as well as delivering witty dialogue at lightning speed, Fassbender demands the attention of the audience in every scene. With this accomplishment in mind, the fact that the actor bears no resemblance to the actual Jobs is irrelevant. In casting Fassbender, the film’s creators were able to display more of Jobs’ true character than all of Hollywood’s past attempts combined.
While Fassbender’s commanding performance is certainly the standout, this by no means diminishes the added value of costars Jeff Daniels, Seth Rogen and Kate Winslet. Daniels, an experienced Sorkin collaborator, plays former Apple CEO and Jobs’ father figure John Sculley. Rogen, stepping away from his comedic roots, takes on the role of Steve Wozniak, Apple’s co-founder and Jobs’ former best friend. Both actors do an excellent job of playing against Fassbender, and their characters’ interactions with Jobs further highlight the tension in Jobs’ own life.
While the evolving relationship between Jobs and his daughter Lisa is made a main focus of the film, perhaps the most interesting and telling dynamic is between Jobs and his right-hand woman Joanna Hoffman (Winslet). Hoffman is charming with her straightforward nature and stories of growing up in Poland, and as one of the only people to truly understand Jobs, serves as his voice of reason. She is therefore tasked with helping Jobs become a better father, but Boyle and Sorkin ensure that this is portrayed in a way that builds up the audience’s admiration for her rather than reducing her in a non-feminist manner.
In a society seemingly obsessed with recreating moments of Jobs’ life in print and on screen, Boyle and Sorkin’s film stands out from the rest. It casts a shadow on some of the inventor’s greatest achievements by dramatizing his personal life and questioning the ethics behind his decisions. And in doing so, it broadens the scope of its argument by questioning the ethics of biopic films as a whole.
In order to draw audiences in and avoid retelling a well-known story, biopics tend to reveal unflattering, often unpublicized details about their subjects. This is certainly the case with “Steve Jobs” and as a result, the film runs the risk of affecting the way audience members feel toward Jobs’ achievements after the viewing experience.
In a recent interview with Vulture, Sorkin said, “I couldn’t get past Steve’s treatment of his daughter. None of his accomplishments meant anything to me because of this.” With this influence in mind, it’s worth asking — can we ever truly separate visionaries and their personal lives from their masterpieces?
It’s essentially the Woody Allen effect. While the director has a murky personal history that many would argue is worse than Jobs’, several of his films are still considered to be among the best in the medium. When watching “Midnight in Paris” or “Annie Hall,” most viewers don’t think about the allegations of Allen abusing his adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow. Instead, the films are recognized for their cinematic quality, and not for their ties to the director’s personal life.
“Steve Jobs,” somewhat similarly, uncovers secrets about the way Jobs supposedly treated both his daughter and his colleagues. Yes, it has been acknowledged that the film is not completely accurate, but seeing Jobs reject his five-year-old daughter or threaten his employee Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg) right before a product launch are both occurrences that seem to fit with Jobs’ tough persona.
When we see Jobs’ professional success on screen and we go on living lives practically run by Apple products, are we ethically obligated to recognize the relatively harsh history behind the products? After current Apple CEO Tim Cook claimed that the biopic was “opportunistic,” Sorkin lashed out and accused the company of mass-producing phones via child labor. He later apologized and said, “I hope that when he [Cook] sees the movie, he enjoys it as much as I enjoy his products.”
The film seems to suggest that we should maintain a notion of an artist’s character while appreciating their creations, but Sorkin’s latest comments recommend the opposite. There’s a sharp disconnect between the two ideas, which seems to play into the overall theme of moral complexity yet again, but the film at least does audience members a favor by opening up the discussion.
A second, and possibly larger, conflict arising out of the film stems from its emphasized fictitiousness. Though “Steve Jobs” is based off of Walter Isaacson’s biography of the same name, Boyle and Sorkin have repeatedly responded to criticism of its dramatization with variations of Sorkin’s following statement: “It’s a painting, not a photograph.”
“Steve Jobs” sets the origin story of Apple’s products aside and instead chooses to create a nuanced portrait of the stubbornly brilliant man. And while the supposedly fictional film does showcase both of Jobs’ sides, it has still been met with plenty of obstacles along the way.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs actively tried to prevent the film from being created, and, aside from Cook’s comments, Apple has noticeably stepped away from it as well. The real-life Wozniak, who consulted with Sorkin for the film, said to Bloomberg TV, “Every scene that I’m in, I wasn’t talking to Steve Jobs at those events.”
But that’s the thing — Wozniak consulted with Sorkin during the writing process, and he approves of the final product. In the same interview, Wozniak acknowledged that the film forgoes reality for the greater goal of capturing the subjects’ personalities. Jobs may not have always treated his daughter as harshly as is depicted in the film, but he probably did to a certain extent.
Films, especially those created by Boyle and Sorkin, are known to sensationalize real-life events, and as long as audiences enter the theater with this knowledge, there’s no harm in the dramatization. If it is acceptable for Abraham Lincoln to be partially fictionalized in films such as Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” the same should apply to all accomplished public figures, regardless of the time frame.
With this film, Boyle and Sorkin paint a beautifully intimate portrait of a private man, and viewers walk away with that invaluable experience in the end. They’re left to personally dissect how Jobs, a man with such deep personal conflicts, was able to both overlook and perfectly understand others’ emotions.
To take the simple concept of a biopic and transform it into a major cultural discussion is quite a feat. And that is what “Steve Jobs” so brilliantly accomplishes.
“Steve Jobs” is now playing in Boston and will be widely released Friday.
