In Jobs, Apple founder
Steve Jobs is portrayed as a genius and a tyrant in equal measure. I’m still
not sure if the movie was asking me to sympathize with him or detest him.
This was not the Jobs movie I was expecting. I was expecting a
fluffy 90-minute Apple commercial: “Look at how brilliant our founder was. Now
go buy a Macbook.” Instead, it is an honest and occasionally brutal examination
into the origins of a flawed genius. It frames Jobs as a sloppy businessman, a
reckless designer and a terrible friend and father. We see the brilliant bits,
too, but mostly we see a quirky designer with lots of obsessive hang-ups — his aversion to shoes and socks, for instance — that
make him eternally difficult to work with, even as he engineers his
revolutionary design aesthetics into the Macintosh, the iPod and the iMac.
Jobs is played by Ashton Kutcher, whose tall lankiness plays well
in the Apple creator. Kutcher mimics Jobs’ hunched walk and his peculiar way of
speaking. It’s an interesting performance, one that Kutcher, whose acting
ability I’ve always doubted, mostly nails.
Jobs begins in the
gold-tinted ’70s, when Steve and buddy Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad) are tinkering
around with video games and other electronics as the industry bubbles to the
surface. In a passing moment, Wozniak, called Woz by Steve, introduces a home
computer he’s built. Steve can’t take his eyes off the crude motherboard; he
sees potential in those soldered circuits. The two form Apple — “The fruit of
creation,” Steve says, “and it comes before Atari in the phone book” — and
begin pitching their first computer around the fledgling tech scene.
Jobs makes enemies out
of good-natured people who stand in Steve’s way. I didn’t like this aspect,
especially since the film portrays these people as early believers in the Apple
brand. This happens several times with Apple CEOs, designers, engineers and
important investors, but happens first with a computer store owner who shows
great faith in Steve’s product by buying the first 100 Apple computers. Later,
the movie seems to turn against this minor character with Steve glaring at him
at a tech expo. It’s the first time we see the petty, stubborn and vindictive
side of Steve Jobs. It’s not flattering.
As Apple grows, Steve and Woz recruit some friends to start
cranking out their computers. They share a wonderful montage in Steve’s garage,
where they all pluck along at building Apple’s first computer. It’s all
bittersweet, though: Steve will eventually cast aside these loyal friends when
it comes time to divvy up the money that starts crashing in. Remember when
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg conned his partner out of millions (and
eventually billions) in The Social
Network? Steve does it here with four different people.
The movie deserves some kind of commendation for painting Jobs in
a less than favorable light. I was expecting lots of pro-Apple worshiping, but
Jobs seemed bored by its subject’s
marketing potential. Instead, it really did stick to Steve Jobs’ complicated
personality, even as he became a detestable wretch at certain points in his
career. Well, most of his career. We see him explode when he doesn't get things
he wants. We witness his juvenile way of speaking to people, and how that
temper is used to manipulate those around him. In an Apple II design meeting,
he fires his best designer because he suggests that the font choices are not
critical components. “Make the small things unforgettable,” Steve says calmly
after a seething fit.
These are unflattering scenes for the Jobs legacy, but they do
reinforce his particular brand of thinking. Steve says repeatedly that Apple doesn't make computers; it makes tools for life. And how people use those tools
is what shapes the world they all live in. Steve was adamant that his vision be
preserved in all of Apple’s products, from the computer casing and color
choices right down to the fonts and the click of the mouse. “We’re gonna put a
dent in the universe,” he says toward the end.
Still, though, I find the Steve Jobs worshiping troubling. At
the end of the day, regardless of the brilliance of the iPhone or iPod, Jobs
was a businessman. His ultimate goal was to make money. The movie reinforces
this cold hard fact by showing him withholding money from those he deems
unworthy of it. Jobs also asks us to
have sympathy for him after the Apple board has him removed in 1985 after a
failed coup. Steve plots his revenge from a mansion so large that the film
can’t frame the whole thing in one shot. That kind of wealth does not inspire
me the way it does the Apple cult. Yes, his designs were elegant and his ideas
grand, but I think history books will downplay Steve Jobs’ role in technology.
This movie agrees with me.
That being said, Jobs
is still an interesting dissection of the Steve Jobs myth. It held my attention
constantly, although I did find myself more drawn to Gad’s goofy performance of
Wozniak than to Kutcher’s too-serious performance of Jobs. The movie also
introduces too many elements that aren't given proper consideration. For
instance, early in the film, he finds out he’s going to be a father. The idea
so frustrates him that he contemplates signing over his parental rights to the
child’s mother. But then at the end of the movie, the teen daughter is living
in his house. The movie glossed over what must have been a difficult process of
acknowledging his role as a father, especially since Jobs himself was adopted. He can't go from disowning the child to serving the child Fruit Loops on the patio without some sort of explanation.
Some Apple purists are going to be upset by this review,
especially since we — myself and Jobs
— aren’t bowing at the feet of Steve Jobs and his tech legacy. Full disclosure:
I own and happily use Apple devices overseen and designed by the late Apple
founder. They’re great products. Now read that last word again: products. Jobs didn't cure polio. He
designed some popular electronic gizmos. And he made a great deal of money
doing it. He’s only human, and Jobs
proves that.
