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Steve Jobs (2015, Danny Boyle)

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Steve Jobs is unexpected. It is a parody of itself, it is a parody of being an “Oscar-worthy” biopic about a topical, zeitgeist figure. Down to having Seth Rogen in a dramatic part. Steve Jobs feels very conscious. In Michael Fassbender’s Jobs, the film gets to create a world where Steve Jobs doesn’t just get to act like a movie star, he gets to look like one too. Director Boyle, cinematographer Alwin H. Küchler, editor Elliot Graham, they embrace the artificiality of it all. Because Aaron Sorkin’s script isn’t a screenplay as much as a filmed stage play, the performance is part of it. The casting is part of it.

Just getting it out there–Rogen’s good. Boyle’s a good enough director, Sorkin’s a good enough writer, they can turn Rogen’s inability to actually act into an asset. Rogen’s so disarming, one really does believe he can do math (and all the other stuff Steve Wozniak can do). It’s a strange performance and Fassbender plays off it a little differently than any other in the film.

Every actor has a different style. Fassbender treats the whole thing as a metamorphosis without every determining whether he’s going from caterpillar to butterfly or butterfly to something else. There’s a weight to the role. Fassbender’s this perfect Aaron Sorkin lead–abrasive but almost always right, condescending but strangely earnest–and Boyle just sits back and watches him go, watches him play off the other actors, who are doing different things.

Kate Winslet’s got this big performance. It’s supporting, but it’s another perfect Sorkin character. Except Winslet’s got her own performance going on, her own understanding of the character. It’s a very different approach than Rogen gets. The film’s about its actors and how they perform the script. Just Sorking walking and talking-style; everyone popping in like it’s A Christmas Carol to tell Ebenezer Jobs how he still hasn’t figured it out yet.

Great supporting performances from Jeff Daniels, Michael Stuhlbarg and Katherine Waterston.

It’s an understated, strange, wonderful film. Boyle and Sorkin get along like Capra and Riskin, Fassbender and Winslet are phenomenal. Steve Jobs is magnificent.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Danny Boyle; screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, based on the book by Walter Isaacson; director of photography, Alwin H. Küchler; edited by Elliot Graham; music by Daniel Pemberton; production designer, Guy Hendrix Dyas; produced by Boyle, Guymon Casady, Christian Colson, Mark Gordon and Scott Rudin; released by Universal Pictures.

Starring Michael Fassbender (Steve Jobs), Kate Winslet (Joanna Hoffman), Seth Rogen (Steve Wozniak), Jeff Daniels (John Sculley), Michael Stuhlbarg (Andy Hertzfeld), Katherine Waterston (Chrisann Brennan), Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo & Perla Haney-Jardine (Lisa Brennan) and Sarah Snook (Andy Cunningham).


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