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'Steve Jobs' Is Accomplished But Unlikeable

Legendary Films

People who know any little thing about computers and their history should be able to make more of Steve Jobs than I can. It may be obvious to them that it is structured around the introductions of three big events in computer history: the debuts of Macintosh in 1984, of NeXT in 1988, and of iMac in 1998. All three events looked so much the same to me that I had no sense of forward motion in the story, and the result was pretty confusing. Human relations between the king of the computer men, played by Michael Fassbender, and his associates, mainly Kate Winslet and Seth Rogen, didn't seem to move forward either, and still don't, despite my seeing the movie a second time.

A speech of Rogen's late in the movie raises a question of whether Jobs is a genius or merely a thief of others' ideas, and one of Jeff Daniels's speeches accuses him of failures of leadership and management, which left me unclear as to exactly what he had done; relations between Jobs and his illegitimate daughter seemed simply to emphasize his incredible self-centeredness, though there were indications that he might have softened a little along these lines.

The continual gigantic sets suggested to me that the people squabbling within them were trapped without even realizing it, which seemed to fit with the human situations and the lack of human progress, regardless what technological progress they may have been making. The unsympathetic character of Jobs himself seemed almost secondary to the fact that the machines were dangerously close to being in control.

The movie as a whole is disturbingly lacking in heart, with normally sympathetic situations unable to move the characters in directions we might like to see them go. But Steve Jobs, I think, is exactly what it was intended to be. I have a lot of respect for it, but can't say I liked it.