Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs (2015) is not a biography; it is built like a three act play staged in backstage corridors just before three product launches. There are three sections: the Macintosh in 1984, NeXT in 1988 and the iMac in 1998. Each takes place in the forty minutes before he walks on, and runs close to real time. The same five people meet him in the same corridor each time, and the same reckonings go unresolved across fourteen years. The heaviest is his daughter. Jobs denied paternity for a long time, and the film takes it up three times, at three ages, in three registers. Aaron Sorkin wrote it and the structure is entirely his choice: rather than narrate a life, he picks three arguments and repeats them. The production was as eventful as the film. Sony dropped the project and Universal took it over. Leonardo DiCaprio was attached to the lead and withdrew; Christian Bale was in talks and left, saying he was not right for the part. It went to Michael Fassbender, who looks nothing like Jobs, and the film does not try to make him. Danny Boyle shot the three sections in three formats: 16mm, 35mm and digital. It failed commercially. It runs 122 minutes. Good for: Sorkin dialogue, technology history, and character conflict. Less good for: it is almost entirely talk, and it moves fast and dense.