There is nothing remotely conventional about the enthralling biopic that director Danny Boyle (“Slumdog Millionaire”) and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (” The Social Network”) have made about Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) the iconic visionary with a major messiah complex. Rather than try and pack in the man’s entire rather manic life in two short hours they focus instead on just the core when Jobs is dealing with three large-scale crucial product launches : first the Mackintosh, then the NExT computer and finally the iMac. It seems that on every single occasion, Jobs was always in crisis overload with so many potential catastrophes about to explode in his face literally minutes before he was to go on stage and unveil his latest baby to a very eager world.
Add to the mix there is Steve “Woz” Wozniak (Seth Rogan) the engineer who had co-founded Apple with Jobs and who is now disgruntled that he is grabbing all the limelight and he unsuccessfully tries to persuade Jobs to at least acknowledge the other engineers and workers who have contributed to their success to date. Plus John Sculley (Jeff Daniels) who at Job’s own behest had become Apple’s new CEO and although he had been the sole supporter of Job’s commissioning Ridley Scott to produce a television advert for the new Mackintosh to be played during the Super-Bowl at an unheard cost of $1.5 million, he unsuccessfully tried to get Jobs to curb expectations of his ambitions for the new product.
So too did Joanna Huffman (Kate Winslet) his ever faithful and much-put-upon personal assistant and only real friend, who begged Jobs to be face up to the reality and acknowledge both the dangerously speculative sales estimates, and also the fact that Lisa really is his daughter.
The action then jumps to 1988 and Job’s launch of the NeXT computer in a Symphony Hall in San Francisco. After the limited success of Mackintosh there had been a power struggle between Jobs and Sculley that had resulted in Jobs being forced out of Apple and buying NeXT. Jobs even privately admits that the specialist very expensive computer he is about to introduce to an invited audience will not work that well, but it has a system that the now struggling Apple Company need and by 1997 they buy both NeXT and its technology and Jobs is back running Apple.
In the meantime he has not only acknowledged Lisa as his daughter but he is now an integral part of her life. She is all grown up and about to go to Harvard by the time we get to the next launch ceremony which with the Internet about to explode is the most important for Job’s to date. He is still however fighting with everyone and refusing to accept that he can ever be wrong about anything, including supporting Lisa . Despite the fact the iMac will clearly be successful, Jobs is as ruthless and nasty as ever and will not concede an iota to Wozniak who is still looking for some public acknowledgement even when he pleads “you can be decent and gifted at the same time”. As a generalization Wozniak maybe right, but in the case of this particular genius, he would never ever behave any better.
Inspired loosely on Walter Isaacson’s massive biography this no-holds-barred portrait of this impossible megalomaniac who compared himself to the likes of Stravinsky and Caesar is undoubtedly the best of the many movie versions we will see of Jobs. Damaged by the fact that he had been adopted as a child, he carried a big chip on his shoulder for most of his life which is implied accounted for the fact that he was so unreasonable. Fascinating too that he insisted that his high aesthetic taste be an integral part of every product even when in several cases, like the NExT black cube, made them outrageously expensive. Fassbender’s powerful portrayal of Jobs which he kept motoring along with such passion and blinkered determination was hard to keep up with, especially for Kate Winslet as Huffman who did her best to do damage control between Jobs and most of the people who foolishly tried to talk reason with him.
Job’s legacy is still making its mark on all us from all the incredibly innovative products that he launched into the world, and now we know a little of the real cost of how they got there.
