Steve Jobs — Blue Fairy Film Blog

Whatever film you choose to make about magnate Steve Jobs it will prove to be polarizing. Many saw him as a harsh, megalomaniac who stole technology from programmers and packaged it as his own innovation. Focused on little details and overtly abusive to his staff and family, Steve Jobs cannot be discussed without a little aside about his off-stage persona, apropos here since the entire film is about the backstage antics and issues with the launches of three different products that Jobs pushed.

Not that I want to bring it up but there have been several biopics for the Apple co-founder, one being the recent “Jobs” starring Ashton Kutcher in the titular role. That film looked at the entire Jobs persona, starting with the free-minded hippie Jobs of his college years, and ending with his return to Apple in the nineties. This film fast forwards through most of Jobs’ backstory so that we only have his interactions with several key people, including co-founder Steve Wozniak (Rogen), his confidante and friend Joanna Hoffman (Winslet), Apple CEO John Sculley (Daniels), and his child Lisa. Kutcher’s performance was brash, especially about how hard hearted Jobs concerning his daughter, who he decided wasn’t his, but it was also an obvious elegy about the icon. Kutcher portrayed him as a wunderkind, obsessive compulsive, who took influence from drug culture, calligraphy, philosophy, and technology, to create Apple and the world of the personal computer.

In stark difference is Michael Fassbender, who wholeheartedly deserved some praise for the even handled, but not tempered, portrayal. Though I have never met Steve Jobs, been privy to who he was as a person, or read the biography by Walter Isaacson, it’s easy to see this as the true Jobs; fostering insecurity while pushing his agenda on an unwilling public. His leaving Apple is not characterized as a huge betrayal like in former iterations, but an unfortunate helming of political power. He and his daughter’s relationship isn’t glossed over, but shown to be complex, heartbreaking, and having multiple flaws. Many of Jobs former friends and employees have come out saying that the harsh, dictatorial Jobs seen onscreen is but one piece of the enormous Jobs persona. That doesn’t mean that this wasn’t Jobs either: a man who was everything and nothing to everyone.

This film was only nominated for Fassbender and Winslet’s performances, but even these two catch in my craw. It’s not that these actors don’t embody their characters, but with the lack of diversity at this year’s awards Winslet’s inclusion feels a little unwarranted. There are so many other people who deserve that slot so much more, and since Winslet’s character is barely onscreen in each section it’s even more apparent that someone else deserved the nomination. Hopefully next year’s set of nominations will better encapsulate a year in film. I will be speaking to this throughout the reviews for this year, so stay tuned.