A pleasant surprise.
Jaded in an era of tiresomely routine biopics like J. Edgar (2011)
and The Theory of Everything (2014), I was thoroughly uninterested in hearing
about this film. Not being a particular admirer of either screenwriter
Aaron Sorkin or director Danny Boyle, or even subject Steven Jobs himself, I
likely wouldn't have bothered seeing it were it not for Michael
Fassbender. (In fact, I was so unimpressed to know that this movie was
coming out that I even regretted that a great actor like Fassbender had wasted
his time doing it.) Jobs is a polarizing figure, and whether you like him
or not probably isn't going to change based on this movie, and that's what I
like about it; it's not a puff-piece on one extreme nor a hatchet-job on the
other. Secondly, it commendably doesn't bother with the standard
Hollywood formula for biopics, instead taking several isolated incidents and
letting them play out almost in real time; making the film really more of an
anthology of three short films about the same character in the same situation
at various times of his career; specifically the launch events of the
Mackintosh computer in 1984, the NeXT Cube in 1988, and finally the iMac in
1998, interspersed with brief flashbacks of other events and expository news
beats. The third thing I like about the film is that Fassbender makes no
effort whatsoever to execute an impersonation of Jobs, with no special make-up
or wigs; in fact, he just looks and sounds exactly like Michael Fassbender the
entire time, save only for the neutral transatlantic accent he uses in all his
American roles. All these things tell me that the team behind Steve
Jobs was interested in making an engaging and serious film, not just
taking the easy path of profiling a famous person, even if that might have made
it a stronger contender for Oscars. Sorkin's trademark artless exposition
– in which he shamelessly has characters just itemize the actual themes of the
movie – is quite off-putting but it is somewhat offset by Fassbender's presence
and Boyle's inventive camerawork and visuals. I often felt like I was
watching one of Oliver Stone's epic biographical films like Nixon (1995)
or W. (2008). (That's a compliment).
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