Steve Jobs-2015

Director Danny Boyle

Starring Michael Fassbender

Scott’s Review #288

Reviewed November 25, 2015

Grade: B+

Steve Jobs is a name that almost everyone has heard of.

Most associate him with Apple products, or at least know him as a technological genius who has influenced the modern world in some way.

His name is a household one.

The film Steve Jobs (2015) offers a slice of his life, focusing mostly on his professional rise to success, his damaged personal life, and his inability to stay close to people in his circle.

Michael Fassbender plays the title role. He doesn’t look like Steve Jobs, but that didn’t bother me.

The film quickly reveals that Steve Jobs is a competitive, cutthroat, and sometimes unkind man. He is driven, ambitious, and willing to do what it takes to succeed in business.

He is also complex, and as the film rolls along, we see the complexities of this man, arguably deemed a “genius.”

But his flaws lie in his personal life, as the film makes abundantly clear.

Kate Winslet is excellent in her supporting role. Joanna Hoffman, Jobs’s loyal marketing executive, stays in his corner through the years, enduring ups and downs, yet their relationship never goes beyond the platonic.

They are colleagues, and both are absorbed in their creations.

Her character is a bit under-explored as we are never exposed to much of her personal life. Winslet in a rare “dowdy” role, makes the most of Joanna as she is the type of woman who throws herself into her work at the expense of her private life.

The film is primarily set during the three important software launches and, predictably, all are filled with issues and stress.

The bulk of the first act occurs in 1984 when Jobs and Hoffman struggle and fret during an Apple Macintosh launch in front of an auditorium filled with industry types eager to see the new technology.

The scene is tense as the new computer will not say “hello” as advertised and Jobs demands lead engineer, Andy Hertzfeld, fix it.  The scene escalates in its intensity.

We immediately bear witness to the fact that Steve Jobs is a shark. He is demanding and unlikable and the film is not afraid to stress that fact as the action continues.

We are next introduced to Jobs’s personal life. A beautiful young woman arrives at his office with a young girl. They are both on the brink of being destitute and thrown out of their home, yet Jobs refuses to help them and coldly calculates the probability that the young girl (Lisa) is biologically not his.

As the film chugs along Steve Jobs has a turbulent relationship with Lisa as the film spans the period from 1984-1998.

The film is a character study of sorts and we learn the complexities of Jobs. Fassbender gives a nuanced performance allowing the audience to absorb these character traits and ultimately feel emotional sympathy for him.

I admire this character study of Steve Jobs and feel that I know him quite a bit more, on a human level, than I once did.

Perhaps the supporting characters might have been fleshed out a bit more, but in large part, Michael Fassbender’s portrayal of a real-life person makes this film successful.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actor-Michael Fassbender, Best Supporting Actress-Kate Winslet