Steve Jobs

Saw Steve Jobs, another rat-a-tat film scripted by Aaron Sorkin.  Due to the writer and subject, I couldn't help but compare this to yesterday's Social Network.  This one is much more dense and less simplistic, I feel, but also somehow a weaker film.  It's very information-dense and wordy (of course) but I found it hard to care very much about the intense family and business struggles of Steve Jobs.  My opinion is colored somewhat since I'm very much outside of Steve's cult of personality (I've never even used a mac for more than a few hours in my life I think) and he struck me as a person who doesn't deserve their accolades (but then, who does?)

Anyway, it also doesn't help that the film constrains itself to three real-time vignettes of backstage drama during three product launches over Steve's career.  Each time, Steve is visited by the three ghosts of business (in the form of long-time Apple CEO John Sculley,) technology (Steve Wozniac,) and family (his daughter, Lisa.)  As with Social Network, the girl is posited as the key to the riddle and while this feels simplistic to me, Steve is a more accessible person than Mark Zuckerberg, so it may be closer to the mark.

The film, to its credit, fully explores each of these angles on the Steve-ian enigma, and each provides some great shouting scenes where the actors can show off their chops.  The film is fairly chilly and kind of claustrophobic.  Because he's having these conversations literally minutes before a product unveiling, when hoards of people are literally baying for his presence, everything seems heightened, dramatic, and tense.  It's tough to tell the jerk side of Jobs from the stage jitters side of Jobs.  It's a small thing.

So, this film was alright.  I feel I was not the target audience and that the target audience was in fact Apple/Jobs fan-boys or folks who are just interested in the glitzy big-business/advertising side of things, but the film delivered histrionics and tense show-downs that require attention and I liked that.  I liked The Social Network a little better, even as I think it's a somewhat sillier film, but this one was a bit too chilly/intellectual.  I would have preferred some more time and some more conventional storytelling.