Films/DVD Asylum

Shakespeare on Silicon . . . .

207.244.75.50

This Post Has Been Edited by the Author

In Reply to: RE: "Steve Jobs" the most talking in a movie ever. In the end it was good but a bit too much bickering. nt posted by PhilJ on October 24, 2015 at 13:59:06

This isn't what I expected at all. This was a play not a film (much in the vein Birdman). The sets and background were immaterial to the high dramatic dialog written to illustrate Jobs' life and attitudes--emphasis on attitudes.

We open with Steve and he is in every scene and flashback (and there were plenty of those). This was, in a sense, a play featuring Fassbender and Winslet set before three big product launches. It is all the action prepping and the encounters with staff, his ex-girlfriend and the girl he refuses to accept as his daughter. It is all dialog intensive.

Jobs goes through many changes in his success trajectory but never seems to learn much in how to regarded other people. He would strike like a snake only to have regrets at a much later date. We see his high flying attitude throughout the film and wonder if he ever had a quiet moment of personal peace. Boyle brought things to a close with a sense of forgiveness and reconciliation with his daughter which softens his character.

None of the acting can be faulted nor can the screenplay. It's just that people, on the whole, aren't going to be ready for such a Shakespearean enterprise of all talk and very little action.

I am unfamiliar with Apple products but in one bit Jobs points at a giant graphic of Allan Turing on a wall next to the rainbow Apple with a bite out of it. He explained Turing was the father of the computer and that he committed suicide by eating a poisoned apple. Hmm. If that is true than that explains a lot of things.

If you march off to see this keep in mind this is not a litany of praises for Jobs or his products. Do not check your brain at the door. I feel Marc Anthony summed it best: "I come not to praise Steve Jobs but to bury him."

RIP, Steve. You were one hell of a complicated fellow.

Follow Ups: