Steve Jobs
Composite Score: 81.53
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, Michael Stuhlbarg, Katherine Waterson, Perla Haney-Jardine, Sarah Snook, and John Ortiz
Director: Danny Boyle
Writers: Aaron Sorkin and Walter Isaacson
Genres: Biography, Drama
MPAA Rating: R for language
Box Office: $34.44 million worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
2015 was a bit of a lull in the midst of a great film renaissance in the mid-2010s, lasting from 2013/14 to 2018, but it still produced 24 films that currently sit on the list of Greatest Films of All Time – one of them being Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs, which I’d personally put as one of my top 5 films of that year. This film looks at the person of Steve Jobs through three major technology launches that he was a part of from 1984 to 1998. It explores his character through the lenses of five or six different relationships. It’s a fascinating way to craft a biopic, and it has much more to say about celebrity and success than it does about the actual person of Steve Jobs.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
If you want to see every episode of Steve Jobs’s life played out in biopic form, this is not the one for you – Jobs (2013) with Ashton Kutcher offers a slightly more complete biography. This film wants to tell a character story more than a biography, which works, but if you go in expecting biography, be ready to be fairly confused. Aspects of Jobs’s childhood and his relationship with Woz during the development of Apple are mentioned and explored but rarely fleshed-out.
If you are looking for a moral statement on Steve Jobs and his life choices, this also is not that. Certain actions and relationships are painted more negative than others. Positive and negative feelings toward the man Steve Jobs come out of this film. There is undoubtedly more negative human connection than positive, but there is also a feeling of potential growth at the end, signaling growth but not the end of Steve’s story, allowing the viewer to form their own opinion not just from the film but from their knowledge of the man’s life outside of the film’s episodes. It is again, a fascinating, if frustratingly gray, methodology for making a biopic.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
Firstly, Michael Fassbender’s portrayal of Steve Jobs is phenomenal, and I will stand by my statement that he was robbed of the Oscar that year for as long as I have a platform – instead, Leo won for grunting out five lines of dialogue and sleeping in a horse or something in a film that was carried by Tom Hardy’s performance, which didn’t win the Best Supporting Oscar, losing to Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies. I have a lot of strong feelings about the 88th Academy Awards. Nonetheless, Fassbender’s delivery of the complex dialogue supplied by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin remains impressive, moving, and fully captivating, allowing him to dominate the room in every scene, much as Jobs consistently captivated his audiences in the instances portrayed in the film. Fassbender captures the complexity of the charismatic CEO in the midst of a fall from grace and return to power, especially his turbulent relationships with those around him.
The supporting cast of the film also shine, rarely being fully dwarfed by Fassbender’s performance. Jeff Daniels skillfully portrays the eventually disgraced Apple CEO John Sculley, going toe-to-toe with Fassbender in an emotional follow-up to Jobs’s removal from Apple during the film’s second act before returning in a more subdued form in the third act. Seth Rogen handles himself as Woz, often at the receiving end of much of Jobs’s ire and callousness. The emotional depth that Rogen brings to the person of Steve Wozniak is interesting, considering the majority of Rogen’s other roles, but he handles playing the brains behind the founding of Apple and especially the Apple II computer well. Kate Winslet most consistently shines as Jobs’s head of marketing Joanna Hoffman. She holds her own against Fassbender, reminding him of his humanity and keeping him grounded through every episode that we get to see. She is, ultimately, the heart of the film who helps the audience see the potential for good in Steve Jobs even as he is threatening to stop paying for his daughter’s college and continuing to refuse to acknowledge the Apple II team’s role in building the Apple company. Her human element also garnered a well-deserved Oscar nomination, losing perhaps a little more reasonably to Alicia Vikander for her role in The Danish Girl.
An impressive script combined with skillful acting performances throughout help create a unique biopic that does more to explore the character of Steve Jobs than to give a summary of his life or to pass judgement on the man who made Apple what it is today. The film’s unique take on the biopic genre and unwillingness to take a full stand on Steve Jobs’s character might frustrate some viewers, but its engrossing dialogue delivered by talented actors more than elevates it above most critiques. Ultimately, Steve Jobs shows that it belongs as part of the Great Films club and should certainly be a film worth watching.
