“It’s not binary. You can be decent and gifted at the same time.”
This is a parting shot from Steve Wozniak to Steve Jobs in Aaron Sorkin’s superbly calibrated script, STEVE JOBS, the second biopic in as many years about the marketing guru who superseded Adam and Eve and Isaac Newton when it comes to apples.
A perfectionist who put the prick into prickly, Jobs was a megalomaniac whose ego made caring and sharing null and void.
He cast aspersions on his paternity, koshed his collaborators and dissed his employers, but was charismatic as Christ to computer consumers across the universe.
In the lead role, Michael Fassbender cranks up the charisma as the Apple proselytiser that goes some way to get a glimpse of the genius who was also a gargantuan pain in the arse.
He plays him at three stages of his stellar career and we see a perceptible change in his journey.
It’s Sorkin’s brilliantly conceived and executed structure of his screenplay that gives the narrative shape and strength for high calibre actors to shine here. His screenplay is rigidly schematic, unfolding in three long, chamber piece-style acts all set on the eve of major product launches: the Macintosh in 1984; Jobs’ NeXT education computer in 1988; and finally the glowingly transparent iMac in 1998.
A super supporting cast includes Seth Rogen as Steve Rozniak and Michael Stuhlbarg as Andy Hertzfeld, a couple of nuts and bolts nerds who made the machine Jobs flogged so well, Jeff Daniels as his mentor and father figure, John Sculley, and Sarah Snook as Andrea Cunningham, stage manager to his public appearances.
Kate Winslet as Jobs’ oddjob, PA par excellence is richly deserving of her Oscar nod, as is Fassbender. Sorkin, however, has been snubbed. This screenplay is as good as his Oscar winning The Social Network, but hasn’t even been nominated. For my money, it’s a better script than The Big Short or The Martian, which both won Best Adapted Screenplay awards.
Directed with energy and pace by Danny Boyle, STEVE JOBS cuts to the core of one of the fantastic phenomena in contemporary capitalism and mass communications.