Danny Boyle, VS 2015
language: English – subtitles: Dutch
Danny Boyle’s drama about Apple guru Steve Jobs plays more like a backstage musical than it does a conventional biopic.
Its story is organized around three product launches – the Macintosh computer in 1984, Jobs’ NeXt computer four years later, and his triumph with the iMac in 1998. That may sound like very dreary subject matter for a movie, but with Boyle’s hyper-energetic direction and a brilliantly witty screenplay by Aaron Sorkin (who also wrote The Social Network), each launch is as full of tension, drama and backbiting as any Broadway first night.
The film begins in very dynamic fashion. Michael Fassbender as Jobs, Kate Winslet as his devoted assistant Joanna Hoffman, Seth Rogen as his colleague Steve Wozniak and Michael Stuhlbarg as the put-upon software engineer Andy Hetzfeld all ping Sorkin’s one-liners off one another with zest and humor. Right from the outset, Jobs is portrayed as a perfectionist with an infuriating streak. “Your products are better than you are” is the criticism levelled at him as he rides roughshod over the sensibilities of his colleagues and pays (at least initially) scant attention to his young daughter.
He’s a man in a rush, with no time to be “polite and realistic” as he ushers in a revolution in computing. Fassbender plays him as a Mephisto-like figure with a demonic energy and a genius for marketing.
Jobs doesn’t know how to write code; he is not an engineer; he is not a designer. But when someone has the temerity to ask what he actually does, he makes it clear that he is the conductor: “I play the orchestra.” His followers “live and die” by his praise, which he is reluctant to give. He enjoys keeping the limelight for himself.
Students 3,50 euro | others pay 7,50 euro