The official Steve Jobs biopic, written by Aaron Sorkin, was shown at the Telluride Film Festival for a preliminary screening ahead of its cinema debut on October 9th. The reviews are in and seem to be very good indeed. Variety called it “a terrific actors’ showcase and an incorrigibly entertaining ride that looks set to be one of the fall’s early must-see attractions.”
The film is just over two hours long, with Michael Fassbender who plays Jobs, being a standout success. The Guardian described Fassbender playing the lead role as a transformative experience with others already lobbying Fassbender for an Oscar for the part. We’ve compiled some quotes from various reviews below. Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak seems to like the film as well …
In an interview with Deadline, Wozniak said that it was like seeing the real Steve Jobs go about his business:
Wozniak’s comments are mirrored by many other movie publications. Time Out gave the film a 4/5 rating, saying it is ”astonishingly brilliant whenever it’s not breaking your heart’.
As shown by some of the film trailers, Jobs’ ‘broken’ relationship with his daughter Lisa is portrayed throughout tying together the event timeline with an emotional kicker, as described by Hollywood Reporter.
One of the most clever elements of the movie is how it is recorded. The plot revolves around three product presentations, one from 1984, one from 1988 and one from 1998. However, to sell the story of time development, the scenes are shot using different film technologies of the era — grainy 16mm for scenes in 1984, 35mm for 1988 and highly-defined digital cameras for the 1998 sequences.
Variety describes this attention to detail as a distinction that “may well be lost on the vast majority of viewers, but it’s just the sort of nicely understated aesthetic flourish that Steve Jobs himself would have surely appreciated.”
It’s worth noting that although the timeline is centered around the three product launches, you see very little of Jobs actually presenting on stage. The film is framed by a prologue sequence by Arthur C Clarke announcing the concept of a ‘small’ personal computer … which has many ulterior connotations that are then demonstrated by Jobs in the film. IndieWire explains:
Most reviews are overwhelmingly positive, with many comparisons to The Social Network as another Aaron Sorkin success story. Crave details how the novel 3-segment story describes the life of a single man so eloquently. It may be the official biography film but it’s very different to the chapters of the Isaacson book.
The film will be shown in cinemas from October 9th. It will be a little while before we’ll see the recognition, if any, from the awards shows but the takeaway from these reviews is very positive.
Steve Jobs is another crackling Aaron Sorkin script, complete with walk and talks. Instead of applying this banter to a linear series of events (or a direct adaptation of the Walter Isaacson biography), Sorkin structured the film in three major sequences that encapsulate the entirety of the man. It’s extraordinary, and Danny Boyle directs the hell out of it too.
