It’s a hot subject matter: Steve Jobs, innovator and Apple creator, whose passion and obsessive nature is equalled by his anti-social nature and contempt for people.
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In truth, it is difficult to make a bio-pic of such a well-known personality relatively not long after his death compounded by the curiosity factor of Ashton Kutcher playing the title role.
Kutcher is surprisingly good – a little mannered at times – but delivers the essence of the man, or at least the extensively researched character that Jobs scriptwriter Matt Whiteley presents.
Joshua Michael Stern’s film paints a clear picture of Jobs, accentuating his unique skills to develop ‘‘a tool for the heart’’ with limitless options and his brazen negotiating skills, as his vision for everyman’s computer becomes a reality.
But ultimately, it is Jobs’ flaws as a human being with no moral compass and his innate inability to deal with people decently – either in his business or personal life – that we cannot help but remember.
Loyalty is not a word in the Jobs vocabulary.
The film’s flaws are in the storytelling and while the minutia of the early days is canvassed as Jobs creates the first Apple office in the garage of his step-parents’ home, the jump from the ’80s to the ’90s, to the present day are frustratingly scant.
After a brief sequence in 2001, when Jobs launches iTunes, the device offering 1000 songs in your pocket that revolutionalises an entire industry, the film is told in flashback, beginning in 1974.
Identifying early on that he cannot work for other people is a rare honest moment and we see first hand how he abuses trusts and friendships.
The scene in which he denies any responsibility to his pregnant girlfriend is indicative of his self-obsessed nature. The film’s most heart-wrenching moment comes in the scene between Jobs and Woz, the lovable, trusting geek with whom Jobs begins Apple.
There is limited interest in the ins and outs of the boardroom struggles and inter-personal relationships and the time jumps negate continuity.
The final one in which we meet Jobs, seemingly contented, surrounded by a loving family seems to be at odds with everything we have seen before; the script’s lack of credibility is on show here and we feel as though we missed an all-important part of the journey.
It is hard to admire anything about the man portrayed on screen, but it is his legacy and his ability to inspire that will be remembered.
Hopefully, the next film about Jobs for which The Social Network writer Aaron Sorkin is working, will deliver a better script.
URBAN CINEFILE (www.urbancinefile.com.au)
