Michael Fassbender, who plays the title character in the movie “Steve Jobs,” looks nothing like him. And that’s a good thing.
Rather than a literalistic rehash of the life and career of the man behind the Apple personal computing empire, “Steve Jobs” creates an impressionistic inner portrait, a Shakespearean character study in three tautly constructed acts in which Jobs’ contradictions, demons and most searing primal wounds are revealed in constantly peeling layers. Unburdened by the distraction of spot-on impersonation and conventional Great Man milestones, Fassbender and his fascinating, often off-putting character steer clear of the dreaded biopic shallows to explore murkier psychological depths.
Propelled by an ingenious script by Aaron Sorkin, given vibrance and buoyancy by director Danny Boyle, “Steve Jobs” is a galvanizing viewing experience. It’s perhaps the closest thing to the thrilling immediacy of live theater that audiences can get at the multiplex right now.
Sorkin — best known as the creator of “The West Wing” and for his screenplay for “The Social Network” — is famous for his crackling dialogue, which harks back to Hollywood’s rat-a-tat-tat Golden Age and is usually delivered by way of breathless, circuitous walk-and-talks. That exuberant musicality is on full display in “Steve Jobs,” but Sorkin’s real breakthrough here is with structure.
The movie takes place in three discrete 40-minute chapters, each of which finds Jobs on the verge of presenting one of his signature products. Transpiring virtually in real time, these moments work on a number of levels, equally effectively: While Jobs welcomes colleagues and well-wishers (and some not-so-well-wishers) from his past, Sorkin’s script is able to revisit all manner of biographical material without dreary exposition or billboard scenes.
Throughout “Steve Jobs,” Jobs’ colleagues observe that he’s not an engineer or a designer. Instead, he was a synthesizer, someone who deployed those disciplines to create devices that weren’t just functional, but lovable. Here we see what drove that single-minded focus, and glimpse the enigma beneath the carefully cultivated persona. Rather than the boyish, bow-tied nerd and, later, the Zenned-out, turtleneck-wearing philosopher king, the movie’s Jobs is arrogant, petty, insecure and perpetually enraged, just as he’s utterly confident that he’s on the cusp of changing the world.
Of course, he’s right — but he doesn’t know that yet in 1984 when, two days after the revolutionary ad for the Macintosh ran during the Super Bowl, he’s launching the machine itself. Arguing with longtime friend and Apple co-founder Steve “Woz” Wozniak (Seth Rogen) and marketing chief Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winsle), Jobs obsesses over whether the computer onstage will be able to say “Hello.”
Through his bullying back-and-forths and a few brief flashbacks — all staged against the ticking-clock deadline of showtime — one of the film’s central conceits is established: To Wozniak’s chagrin, Jobs always insisted on “end-to-end control” for his machines, meaning they wouldn’t be able to communicate with other systems or be customized by their users. But he adamantly insisted that they be warm and friendly, the antidote to years of Hollywood demonizing computers as HAL-like malignancies and, just perhaps, the antidote to his own demons.
When new Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels) shows up to calm Jobs with a glass of wine, he traces Jobs’ spiky personality to having been adopted as a baby, asking him why he views adoption as being rejected, rather than selected. Jobs dismisses the question out of hand. “It’s the loss of control,” he insists quietly.
With such a self-absorbed control freak at its center, it’s difficult to explain just why “Steve Jobs” is as entertaining, even pleasurable, as it is. Even the finer points of fonts, motherboard expansion slots and corporate intrigue take on the soaring dimensions of a socio-historical epic.
Jobs’ devices have brought the universe into our pockets, but they have made our immediate world a far less warm and interesting place.
The unchecked hubris that drives “Steve Jobs” is often unpleasant, even repellent to behold. But even at his most overbearingly godlike, the film’s protagonist might have been on to something: There’s a little bit of Steve Jobs in all of us now.
