Film Review: Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs
Directed by Danny Boyle

Michael Fassbender is the star of Steve Jobs even though he looks nothing like him. As the film unfolds though it becomes increasingly clear that director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin are less interested in mimicking history and more compelled by a personal fiction which seeks the essence of its subject.

Similarly to The Social Network – which Sorkin also penned – it’s very much about the smartest people in the room so it demands its audience keep pace with it. Paying close attention to Sorkin’s quick-fire dialogue has always been pleasurable but it feels almost orgiastic here. Since the film is boldly structured into three 40 minute segments – each of which explore the lead up to product launches over a fourteen year span – most of the conversations had are long gestating ones and thus the film begins to operate as a revolving door of emotional crossroads. The dialogue bristles with manic energy as a result and comes to reflect the historical and personal stakes which characterized each of the launches.

Much like the coders and technicians which assist in Jobs’ technological vision, everything else which makes up this film is carefully assembled around Sorkin’s powder keg of a script. Although the final scene feels slightly inauthentic after everything that preceded it, Steve Jobs is a suitably unique biopic of a man that refused easy understanding.

Words by Sebastian Moore