Steve Jobs

Although the co-authors of Steve Jobs have worked across var­i­ous gen­res in long careers, nei­ther have mon­keyed sig­nif­i­cant­ly with their sig­na­ture moves. Direc­tor Dan­ny Boyle is known for his ener­getic, whiz-bang for­mal max­i­mal­ism, gen­er­al­ly appro­pri­ate for sto­ries about drug-addled Scots (Trainspot­ting), or zom­bies maraud­ing through Lon­don (28 Days Lat­er…), but less so for depict­ing a trapped climber forced to snip off his own arm (127 Hours).

In both tele­vi­sion (The West Wing, The News­room) and film (The Social Net­work), screen­writer Aaron Sorkin has pio­neered a brand of hyper-caf­feinat­ed, walk-and-talk ear-bend­ing that’s left scores of Amer­i­can don­keys lament­ing the loss of their hind legs.

On paper, the mar­riage of such unbend­ing autho­r­i­al force with a sub­ject as intim­i­dat­ing as the late inven­tor of prod­ucts like the Mac­Book this review was writ­ten on – played here with icy, smirk­ing cock­i­ness by Michael Fass­ben­der – is an intrigu­ing fit. As exem­pli­fied most harsh­ly by Jobs’ stead­fast refusal to pub­licly cred­it co-founder of Apple Inc, Steve Woz­ni­ak (Seth Rogen) for his con­tri­bu­tions to the com­pa­ny, the spiky bof­fin was no nat­ur­al col­lab­o­ra­tor. Rather he main­tained a staunch belief in the effi­ca­cy of con­trol freak­ery, with unde­ni­ably suc­cess­ful results.

It’s actu­al­ly Sorkin who wins out 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. Like Boyle’s Slum­dog Mil­lion­aire, which was elab­o­rate­ly con­struct­ed around TV quiz show ques­tions, such stric­tures engen­der mixed blessings.

On one hand, set­ting the film exclu­sive­ly in moments of high stress – almost always indoors, in dress­ing rooms and cor­ri­dors – fos­ters a brac­ing­ly her­met­ic qual­i­ty. There’s an immer­sive imme­di­a­cy to the open­ing act espe­cial­ly, as Jobs attempts to bal­ance the strain of a vis­it from Chrisann (Kather­ine Water­ston), the extreme­ly dis­grun­tled moth­er of his child, with a seri­ous tech­ni­cal cock-up that his col­league Andy (a bulked-up Michael Stuhlbarg) is strug­gling to rectify.

Jobs also gets to engage in some quick-fire pat­ter with his Pol­ish assis­tant Joan­na (an amus­ing­ly no-non­sense Kate Winslet). As the film ploughs ahead, enlivened by Alwin Küchler’s prowl­ing cin­e­matog­ra­phy and Elliot Graham’s propul­sive edit­ing, its gen­er­al vibe is like an invert­ed take on Sting’s famed love­mak­ing tech­nique: all cli­max, no build-up.

Sad­ly, Sorkin’s script­ing stran­gle­hold robs Steve Jobs of nuance. Char­ac­ter and sto­ry are left serv­ing the form, rather than the oth­er way around. Lit­tle is illu­mi­nat­ed about Jobs oth­er than that he’s incom­pat­i­ble with oth­ers, emo­tion­less and ter­ri­fy­ing­ly smart (say, like an Apple com­put­er, per­haps?), before he learns some brisk life lessons in time to build some bridges with his daugh­ter. (The film­mak­ers’ cal­lous vil­i­fi­ca­tion, then total sidelin­ing, of Chrisann – and con­se­quent­ly the crim­i­nal waste of the excel­lent Water­ston – should also be noted).

Most of all, though, Steve Jobs is scup­pered by its repet­i­tive nature, with Sorkin’s over­ly ver­bose dia­logue and Boyle’s pro­cliv­i­ty for on-the-nose visu­al state­ments sore­ly test­ing the patience, even if one is pre­pared for them.