‘Musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra…’
Aaron Sorkin divides opinion amongst cinema goers. Either he is the king of dialogue, surpassing even Quentin Tarantino, or he is wordy, pretentious and succumbs too easily to sentiment. I fall squarely in the former camp. I even loved the short lived HBO Sorkin vehicle, Newsroom, a show that critics agreed was Sorkin at his most Sorkin. In terms of film scripts however, nobody can deny that Sorkin is in the middle of a good run. The Social Network, Moneyball and Steve Jobs were all Oscar nominated and critically acclaimed, in no small part thanks to Sorkin’s writing.
Steve Jobs is a warts and all biography of the co founder of technology behemoth Apple. Director Danny Boyle portrays Jobs as selfish, arrogant and driven and whilst this is probably an exaggeration of the truth, Michael Fassbender plays the titular role with such gusto that it hardly matters. Fassbender shares a great chemistry with Kate Winslet and every scene with either Jeff Daniels’ John Sculley or Seth Rogen’s Steve Wozniak are a joy to behold. Rogen, in particular, is on form, and brings an authentic, downbeat, every man quality to Steve ‘Woz’ Wozniak, that works as a welcome tonic to the flaming ego of Fassbender’s Jobs.
There is a lot to get through when discussing a man who lived such a full life, and the only criticism of Steve Jobs is that there is only time to focus on three main events; the launches of Macintosh, NeXt and the iMac respectively. Whilst this makes for a winning story telling device, there is still a lot missing, so much so that I think Boyle and Sorkin had enough material to have turned Steve Jobs into a thrilling TV series.
Steve Jobs is funny, enlightening and features a great cast at the top of their game. One of the best films of 2015.