British director Danny Boyle is known for his energetic and action-packed films, which have an attractive cinematic style based on image, motion, hot drama, multiple characters, editing, and the presence of an enjoyable soundtrack at the same time.
This has been demonstrated in films such as Flat Graveyard (1994), Train Spotting (1996), Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and 127 Hours (2010).
As for his latest movie "Steve Jobs" (2015) (Steve Jobs), with which the London Film Festival concluded, it appears that Boyle decided to swim out of the waters he knows well, as he accepted a challenge imposed on him by the script of Aaron Sorkin, which captures three situations Prominent in the life of Steve Jobs, the illustrious personality, the founder of "Apple", who played a major role in developing its computer products, not because he knew how to build or design computers, but because he knew exactly what devices he wanted his company to produce, and what Who wants behind it and how it reaches its users in the market.
The character of SteveThe film focuses on the personality of Jobs through three situations, namely: before the launch of the "Apple 2" in 1984, and what happened after Jobs found himself fired from the company in order to establish another company and announce About preparing to launch a new device called “Next” in 1988, then returning on its terms victoriously to Apple, in order to finally launch the new revolutionary development of home computers, which was represented in the year 1998 in the “iMac” device; That is, the film does not aspire to be a film about "the life of Steve Jobs" as much as it is a study of his personality linked to specific situations.
The film ignores, for example, the mention that the real father of Jobs, Abdel Fattah Jandali, is an Arab Muslim from Syria, who is now eighty years old.
Perhaps this choice made the film lose many other angles through which it was possible to probe the depths of the personality of a man obsessed with the idea of success, whatever the price, even if he makes others around him - that is, designers and engineers specializing in computer technology - just a group of "extras". He refuses to give them the consideration and appreciation they deserve, and wants to monopolize the championship and attribute success to himself, describing himself as the maestro who leads a band.
obsessed with workIn an attempt to make the main character in the script a figure of flesh and blood, which viewers feel and interact with, the film connects Jobs with his work and his personal life, portraying him as a rebel against his private life, devoting his greatest attention to his work He seeks to achieve his ambition, but we often see him as an evil monster who disguises his daughter and refuses to acknowledge her, describing her mother, who was his lover in the past, with the worst characteristics in his direct television interviews.
Jobs does not begin to approach the child, whose mother assures him that he is her real father, while he suspects that she is defrauded in this way to obtain the largest amount of money she can extract from him, except after he alludes to the girl's tendency to understand computer language despite her young age. That is, only after he sees a hint that brings her closer to his personality and his interests, so he gradually begins to approach her and try to understand her without stopping showing his aversion to her mother, who he sees as spending without reason or reasoning all the money she gets from him, then she returns to ask for more.
There is a lot of repetition in emphasizing the idea of feeling "divinity" with Steve Jobs, or that he is an inspiring person, who has the talent of marketing and advertising and presenting the new product in front of thousands of attendees, as if he was more of a magician than a "businessman".
There is also a lot of exaggeration in portraying his extremism in dealing with his daughter, his failure to acknowledge her, and his rude refusal to help her mother, who was his mistress in the past, for no apparent reason.
The film is also filled with many details related to the computer world without meaning much to viewers who are not familiar with the history of the development of "Apple" devices, and the devices that the film stops in front of appear outdated, belong to the past and look funny today in the face of the industry's technology.
Impressive situationsAmong the film's weaknesses are the scenes in which Steve Jobs appears as he prepares to unveil himself in front of a crowd of eager young people sitting inside the big theater in front of a giant screen with the company's distinctive sign on it, as if we were in front of a movie Commercial advertising films.
There are, of course, many influential situations that Danny Boyle portrays brilliantly, especially those that revolve between Steve Jobs and engineer Steve Wozniak (played by Seth Rogen), who designed the "Apple 2" device, during that confrontation between them inside the theater in front of Wozniak's team, when he demands it The latter needed to recognize his role and the role of his team of designers who were behind this achievement, which was considered in his time (in 1984) a big leap forward in the field of personal computers.
There is a good depiction of Jobs' relationship with his assistant, the company's marketing director, "Joanna Hoffman" (played by Kate Winslet), who also has a deep friendship with him, and seems the only one who understands him and his extremism resulting from his extreme devotion to his work and his desire to achieve "perfection" like any other. Creative artist, although mainly a businessman.
And Joanna is the one who can also confront him and push him to confront himself and straighten his relationship with his daughter, and he responds to her with the influence of her strong personality and sincerity and his certainty that she does not seek to snatch the spotlight from him, while he is suspicious of others around him, but rather her motive is honesty and sincerity to him. She was the one who stayed by his side until the end.
Emotions escalateDespite feelings that sometimes escalate to the climax of melodrama, especially in Jobs' relationship with his daughter near the end of the film, the film suffers from the many and long dialogues that hardly stop.
The film also suffers from reliance on filming inside offices, halls, and closed spaces in general, which makes the task of Danny Boyle and his German director of photography, Alwin Kochler, difficult, and pushes them to circumvent by excessive transitions by cutting between very close, close-up and medium shots of Jobs' face, and continuous diversification In the corners within the same scene, so that Steve Jobs appears sometimes as a dominant personality, and at other times as an ill-tempered personality, suffering from paranoia.
Boyle resorts to using a moving camera (steadycam) that follows the characters inside long, narrow corridors, to overcome the limitations of the place on the one hand, and to suggest the intensity of the tension surrounding the work of this man who considers himself the true founder of the personal computer world.
Acting PerformanceDespite Danny Boyle's efforts, this is not one of his distinguished films, but rather is considered the least "cinematic", and it remains mainly an acting performance film, in which the performance of the rising Irish actor "Michael Fassbender" reaches The height of control over the expression of conflicting feelings, the transition from the particular to the general, and from strength to a kind of latent weakness that his features indicate without the dialogue revealing him, but rather he remains clinging to his position despite that.
He takes the role to a height of acting that makes his character often appear to be driven by mysterious demonic forces towards his destiny no matter what. Fassbender has a special power in the scenes that revolve between him and the actor Jeff Daniels, who plays John Sculley, CEO of "Apple", who had a friendship tinged with great admiration for Steve Jobs, and yet he opposed him and strongly disagreed with him when Sculley wanted to market "Apple" to users IBM devices, while Jobs strongly opposed it, which led to Sculley expelling Jobs from the company.
But Sculley would later find himself fired himself after his management policy caused the company to implicate it in debts exceeding two billion dollars, and then the company brought Jobs back and gave him more influence in determining how to deal with markets for new products.
The British actress Kate Winslet was also distinguished in this film in the role of "Joanna", who was difficult to recognize because of her great role, with her short black hair, thick glasses and her traditional antique clothes in the first half of the movie, before she changed in shape and clothes in the half The second, although it retained the same dialect of foreign origin, the ability to suppress feelings, and the constant panting behind Jobs, to remind him of the tasks awaiting him.
At the same time, we glimpse the specter of a "personal" interest on the part of Joanna in Jobs, which reaches near the end to the point of revealing, but without the matter developing between them, as Jobs here seems more interested in the machine, in the world of "business" than in any other feelings or interests that distort it. Far from his "high message" to change the world!_______________
* Writer and film critic