Film Review - Steve Jobs
Dec. 12th, 2015 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatJust saw the film, Steve Jobs which blew me away. I don't tend to like bio-pics, because they are either overly sentimental or attempt to throw too much of the person's life at the audience. But here, Aaron Sorkin (the screenwriter) and Danny Boyle (director) craft a tight, gripping character piece of a man so obsessed with his vision and his own accomplishments, he can see little else and tends to steamroll over everyone around him. Each scene of the film is set around product launches, when Jobs is about to go onstage to do a demo of his newest product to an audience of thousands. Backstage he has various discussions with people involved in the launch, and family members. How it is structured feels a bit like watching a play, the dialogue moves the action and the verbal word-play is the verbal equivalent of a sword-fight.
Kate Winslet is almost unrecognizable in the supporting role of Jobs' marketing head and assistant, Johanna, and Jeff Daniels portrays Jobs father-figure and boss, Scully, as a man slowly deteriorating.
The structure and time frame of the film surprised me. It's set between 1984 at the launch of the Macintosh and 1998, with the iMac. The failed launch of the Macintosh computer opens the film, while the hugely successful launch of the iMac closes it. The characters are Jobs, his marketing aid/work wife - Johanna, Andy Herowitz (chief engineer), Was - his former partner, who developed the Apple II (which by the way was my first computer), Scully - his boss, Chrissane Brennan and his daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs (who Aaron Sorkin had interviewed prior to doing the film).
What it really gets across is the complexity of Jobs. A brilliant strategist and marketing mind, who was sucked at engineering and human relationships. Coldly ruthless, it's hard to like Jobs, but Fassbender and Sorkin kept me riveted. And I understood why people stuck with him and cared about him - he is also charming and has moments of ...warmth.
Great film - sent a chill down my spine. Second one to do that this year. The first was Spotlight.
Tonight - off to a Christmas party. Tomorrow - a baby's christening at my church, brunch and the movie Mockinjay Part II.
Then on Monday...I commute to mid-town Manhattan again for the first time in 8 years. For the last 8 years it's been Jamaica. This is so weird.
Kate Winslet is almost unrecognizable in the supporting role of Jobs' marketing head and assistant, Johanna, and Jeff Daniels portrays Jobs father-figure and boss, Scully, as a man slowly deteriorating.
The structure and time frame of the film surprised me. It's set between 1984 at the launch of the Macintosh and 1998, with the iMac. The failed launch of the Macintosh computer opens the film, while the hugely successful launch of the iMac closes it. The characters are Jobs, his marketing aid/work wife - Johanna, Andy Herowitz (chief engineer), Was - his former partner, who developed the Apple II (which by the way was my first computer), Scully - his boss, Chrissane Brennan and his daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs (who Aaron Sorkin had interviewed prior to doing the film).
What it really gets across is the complexity of Jobs. A brilliant strategist and marketing mind, who was sucked at engineering and human relationships. Coldly ruthless, it's hard to like Jobs, but Fassbender and Sorkin kept me riveted. And I understood why people stuck with him and cared about him - he is also charming and has moments of ...warmth.
Great film - sent a chill down my spine. Second one to do that this year. The first was Spotlight.
Tonight - off to a Christmas party. Tomorrow - a baby's christening at my church, brunch and the movie Mockinjay Part II.
Then on Monday...I commute to mid-town Manhattan again for the first time in 8 years. For the last 8 years it's been Jamaica. This is so weird.