I’ve read and liked the book on which the movie is based, I like Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter, who also wrote the screenplay for The Social Network, and I like director Danny Boyle (from Slumdog Millionaire, replacing David Fincher, one of my favorite directors, who gave up on the project, which was widely reported last year with the Sony hacks). So Steve Jobs was supposed to be a no-brainer for me: I was sure I was going to enjoy it. Yet I left the theater with very mixed feelings about what I’d just seen.

The movie is dived in 3 acts, each taking place in one single day: (i) 1984 – the launch of Macintosh, (ii) 1988 – the launch of Next, and (iii) 1998 – the launch of iMac. So every action we see on the movie is actually happening backstage of these three important events. Birdman came immediately to my mind, since it was also focused on what happens backstage (in this case, days before a Broadway play opening).

As Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) is preparing to give his speeches, he is confronted by 4 people: (a) Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), who helped him in the beginning of founding Apple, (b) John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), Apple’s former CEO and “the man who fired Steve Jobs”, (c) Lisa Jobs, the daughter Steve Jobs refused to recognize as his own (Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo, Perla Haney-Jardine), and (d) Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg), member of the original team who created Macintosh. So, coincidentally, in every major launch day all of the important people in Jobs’ life appeared backstage to discuss their relationships with him.

Another recurring figure is Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), responsible for marketing and also one of the original members of the Macintosh team. She stood by Steve Jobs through all those years and, as she mentions in the film, is the only person who has been able to put up with him.

Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet are perfect in their parts and their interaction was the most interesting thing to me in the movie. The rest of the cast is also really good, but I was annoyed by the dialogues and by the fact that they all showed up at the same time! There’s even a point in the movie where Jobs says that it looks like everybody gets drunk and decides to go after him before a launch event.

This format made me feel like I was actually watching a play rather than a movie. I wouldn’t be surprise if this screenplay were adapted to the theater, since it’s almost ready, in my opinion. In a play, most of the time, the characters have to explain to the audience, through long dialogues, what happened in their lives, since they can represent every scene on stage. That’s what happens in the Steve Jobs: every time those characters look for Steve, they have fast-talking dialogues, one of Aaron Sorkin’s signature, and they keep explaining to each other what happened. But rarely do we see scenes from the past. They are just a few and very short and they appear while the characters are narrating to each other past events in which both were present.

As I mentioned earlier, it made me think of Birdman because the characters keep walking around in corridors while discussing their lives. However, this effect didn’t work for me in this film.

Interestingly enough, we don’t actually see the launches; we only see Jobs preparing for them, which I thought was a great choice, since he’s obnoxious enough backstage. I didn’t need to see him praising himself on stage. So the movie had the same effect on me as the book: the story ends and I don’t understand how it was possible to work with someone so arrogant and self-centered as him.

So, it isn’t as good as The Social Network, but I’m pretty sure we will see it through the awards season. And I left the theater wondering how would it have been if David Fincher had directed it…

Related posts:

Review: Love & Mercy (2015) Movie review: Insurgent (2015) Review: Max (2015) Review: Black Mass (2015)

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