"STEVE JOBS": A MOVIE REVIEW

..I knew the film was opening today, but it was playing in only one theater, about a 40 minute drive away….it was 10:15 p.m and the movie started at 10:45, and with only 30 minutes to drive 40, still, it was an easy decision… ..and I went alone, knowing that it was going to be a gift. I had a hunch this movie was going to give my mind something to chew on for weeks to come..it was going to ferment, …..and, I couldn’t afford to let a companion distract me from my pre and post meditations.

In the last 4 weeks I have seen 5 movies….I can go a year without seeing even one movie….I don’t see movies that much and I don’t sit through about half of them….I pull the ripcord often….the way you would if you were in a plane heading for the side of a mountain, or if you ordered a meal at a restaurant based on your “hunches”, and then it turned out to taste terrible…….these 5 movies all tasted good enough to stay….

“Learning to Drive” (produced by Malibu’s Dana Friedman)

“The Martian”

The Walk

“Everest”

And this one that I saw tonight, “Steve Jobs”. The film stars Michael Fasbender as Jobs, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogan, and Jeff Daniels. The performances are exceptional.

Again, all enjoyable movies but I will likely never see the first four movies more than once…..”Steve Jobs” is a movie that I will see many times…I will study it like a textbook….like an aspiring playright would study “Streetcar named Desire”. The movies I deem great I see many times. I saw “Rushmore” 5 times in the theatre….and I was still licking the plate after the fifth time. …..You can’t truly appreciate Wes Anderson with one exposure. Think of it like this….movies are like tennis balls being dropped from above you, and you are tasked with catching all the balls and letting none of them drop to the floor….most movies are just one or two or three tennis balls…and you can move easily enough to catch all of those and not drop any….”Steve Jobs” was, to me, like having lots and lots of tennis balls being dropped at the same time and struggling to catch just a few….you have to come back to catch all the balls you couldn’t catch the first time… ….it’s a labor of love….but Steve Jobs” is well worth the persistence required.

This film isn’t a celebration of technological achievement…there was some of that to be sure…but it was more of a platform from which to observe how our best and most sublime natures can be over shadowed, and even squashed, by our pursuit of something that is, in the end, material.

Juxtaposed against an Edisonian-like arc of technological breatkthrough is the story of how we decide what really matters most….and it’s always human. That’s the only way it can be..

This movie connects (3) separate 40 minute stretches between 1984 and 1998; three different 40 minute segments that occur just before a Steve Jobs product launch, and each of the (3) segments features Jobs and the same 6 characters, having riveting friction…. The relationships that Jobs has with all of these 6 characters are explosive, and , in the end, they are not clashes over technology or marketing….they are eyeball to eyeball, one human to another human. This film, directed by Danny Boyle and original screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, was carefully crafted not to be a cradle to grave bio pic…with Job’s career highlights interwoven into the process….there is no mention of the iphone or Pixar…those are the material things……it explored the human aftermath, the human implications of being a genius and creating break through world changing technology….

A common thread in all six characters was that they all had the dignity to push back at the larger than life Jobs…some were excoriated, some were abused, some ignored, or under-appreciated, and they were all unwilling to wilt under the heat of Jobs who is, as director Danny Boyle said, “a man pushing to turn the world off it’s axis and onto a different axis”.

Boyles and Sorkin thought they could make a more important story, a more human story..a more transcendent story…by showing that a person who seems heroic, is actually a cripple….an anti-hero with tremendous emotional blind spots ..and a perverse belief in himself…even in the face of colossal failures and miscalculations. He often made terrible decisions and his instincts were often horribly damaging to the company. His reluctance to give Apple Co-founder, Steve Wozniak the credit that he deserved was particularly troubling for it’s stubbornness and pettiness and narcissism.

Why does everyone treat me like Ringo when I know that I am John” – Steve Wozniak

For all of his superhero qualities, and clearly the man is a visionary and a brazen “Moses” like character, Steve Jobs takes a beating in this film….he is exposed, perhaps like never before.... there is no sugarcoating of Jobs abrasive and cold and myopic treatment of his surroundings and his minions…The film was triumphant in many ways, but perhaps no more so than in the fact that Sorkin and director Boyle refused to make Jobs into something that he wasn’t …they were determined to expose the Truth (as they saw it). Hollywood doesn’t like to expose superheroes..it likes to prop them up…cast them in gold…and who better to cast in gold than Steve Jobs…? But, unlike the filmmaker in “8 Mile” who sanitized the biographical movie about rapper Eminem…this movie knew the importance of getting right.

…they did it without moralizing,…they juxtaposed outer success with what really matters…the day to day interactions between people. They resisted the temptation to glorify, and that restored, if only for a moment, my belief in storytellers

Sorkin remained an advocate: “If you are writing an anti-hero you can’t judge that character, you have to write that character as if they are making their case to God why they should be allowed in heaven……you have to be that character’s lawyer

Jobs thought kindness and genius were mutually exclusive….and that kindness was a form of vanity--a desire to be liked…which is a distortion of the word kindness….we are kind because we are trying to leave people feeling like they have made a connection…uplifted…befriended….it is only a cynic who thinks that kindness is mostly self serving…

And, as we heard from Aaron Sorkin, “even if genius and kindness were mutually exclusive….unless you’re curing cancer…be decent…when you are just making a phone…choose decency”

Clearly…. the relationship in the film that is it’s emotional center is the one between Jobs and his first daughter, Lisa…who is 5 when the film starts., and who, for years, Jobs denies to be his daughter…in spite of overwhelming blood test evidence. It is the relationship that makes every other pursuit secondary…..even the pursuit of a personal computer and a phone in your pocket…

In the end, I am left wondering just how important Steve Jobs has been to our culture….it is a fair question. Yes, he has made a colossal impact….he has created millions of jobs…etc., and his gadgets are taking up a lot of our life space…but can we say that the quality of life of a teenager or adult now is better than that for a teenager or adult in the 50, ‘s, 60’s, or 70’s? The answer to that question is not entirely clear…

Now, air conditioning…that is technology we can’t live without…<grin>

food for thought....

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