Biopic on legend creates more misconceptions

Jobs
English (U/A) ¬¬
Director: Joshua Michael Stern
Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Josh Gad, Dermot Mulroney

Arguably, Steve Jobs considered himself more an artist than a technological innovator.
Speaking about the then-radical Macintosh computer, he had justified the revolutionary, self-encapsulating design by claiming that art has no set boundaries.

“Great art stretches the taste, it doesn’t follow the taste,” he said, apparently bewildering a generation of artists and innovators about the evolving aesthetics of design. One of those confused happens to be filmmaker Joshua Michael Stern, who obviously feels he has made a fine, philosophical tribute to an artist, but has instead left us with a film which has only stretched the truth.

In a movie which is much too short and rushed, and comes off as the cinematic equivalent of a powerpoint presentation, the story of Jobs’ near homeric rise in Silicon Valley is blurred in places and capped by frustratingly abrupt sequences. Despite this, there appear scenes of rare beauty, even if they happen to be wholly tainted by melodramatic flair. 

Popular lore tells us that Jobs first experienced an epiphany of “what the future of computing was destined to be,” after a 1979 visit to Xerox’s Palo Alto research facility.

In the film, this moment occurs five years earlier, when Jobs (Ashton Kutcher), then a college dropout, his girlfriend, Chris-Ann, and friend, Daniel Kottke (Lucas Haas), lie in a grassy field, in an LSD-induced haze, when resounding symphonic music draws Jobs into the grassy field, his arms outstretched as if to absorb the immensity of the universe.

A darting vision of a circular object, resembling an iPod control wheel, reflects down from the sun, resulting in a flash of genius. In Stern’s world, magic beans plus blinding sunlight equals inspiration.

The film then picks up a dizzying pace. Within the span of an hour, we see Jobs enlist the services of the dazzlingly intelligent Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad) who sparks a futuristic-vision of personal computing — the ability to see keyboard-typed inputs on screen. Scenes of a fledgling Apple setting up shop in the family garage, and attracting the financial backing of investor Mike Markulla (Dermot Mulroney) follow. A blurred cacophony of sequences later we see the company operating out of a new multi-story glass palace in idyllic Palo Alto.

Stern may have no talent in constructing a cogent sequence of events, but his ability shows in the crafting of emotional intensity. A scene where Jobs and his retinue reveal the Apple II home computer at a convention, crackles with electricity. Cue rousing orchestral music and magic is born. Where Stern fails to make the grade, however, is casting. Kutcher, despite his close mimicry of Jobs’ posture, walking style and mannerisms, sometimes lumbers to fill the big shoes posed by his role.
 
Ultimately the film is a hagiography of a fiercely individualistic outsider who defied the convention, eschewed a formal education (described as self-validation for the masses) and who became so consumed by his desire to reach artistic perfection in technology that it rendered him difficult and cruel.

Jobs would have been a better film if it had an extra hour or even half-an-hour of film time for balance. But just when the film begins to gather steam with Jobs’ triumphant return to Apple in 1996, the pathos is ruined by the banality of an ending which even Jobs would not have hesitated to castigate and consign to the deepest recesses of the recycle bin.