Few people get a chance to leave a mark in history. In the
past they were emperors, conquerors, politicians, dictators etc. As our society
evolves the people we admire and recognise changed too, and so do the people we
considered leaving a mark in human history. Steve Jobs, the late Apple Computer co-founder was one of them.
His passing has always been considered as an end of an era –
not just for Apple but also for the whole technology industry. That’s how
influential he is. So it is not surprising that some Hollywood producer jumped
on and produced the biopic “Jobs” to recount his life.
To say that “Jobs” is a biopic is a bit of an
over-statement. Watching the movie feels like watching a life action chronicle
of Steve Jobs. You know what is happening without a doubt, but whether it is
really telling a story is another story. That is not to say “Jobs” is a bad
movie. I just felt that I didn’t really have a chance to know Steve Jobs as a
person. In “Hilary and Jackie” I fully understand the life of Jacqueline du Pre
and her rivalry with her sister. In ‘Social Network” I had a good glimpse of
the controversy of Facebook and its founder. But in “Jobs” I understand what
goes on with Steve Jobs’ life but I don’t understand Steve Jobs as a person or
a character.
Ashton Kutcher worked hard to deliver a very promising
performance. He proved that he could be more than just a romcom or comedy
actor. However, due to the highly fragmented nature of the movie, you sometimes
just had no idea why Ashton, or the Steve Jobs he was portraying behaved in a
certain way. The movie tried to explain but then the attempts just got muddled
up with all the other murky stuff in the movie. The movie felt so hollow to me
that at times I could hear the noise generated by the hollowness. There were a
lot of things going on and they seem cohesive chronologically but at the same
time they were very independent from each other. As a person who has not read
up his whole life from his biography, I did not get to know Steve Jobs better
or appreciate his vision of revolutionising the computing industry better. I
think that is the main shortcoming of this movie.
The movie opens with Jobs introducing the iPod and you could
see in that scene Ashton Kutcher was doing his best to impersonate Steve Jobs.
The make up he put on and the physicality he displayed showed that he had done
his homework. Then the story flashed back to where everything started. From
that point onward I felt like I was watching someone turning over pages and
pages of a scrapbook for me. I had a glimpse of the events but I did not have
enough time to understand or appreciate the events. I understand that it could
be hard to cramp all the colourful events of Jobs’ life in around 2 hours, but
surely there could be ways to focus on certain events to flash out Jobs lives
better. His many accomplishments seemed to have taken over his life in this
movie. Maybe the producer thinks that people are interested in the events
themselves not Steve Jobs, but then why bother making a biopic? They could just
make a news special in a current affairs program.
That said, “Jobs” is not a totally bad movie. It was just
not very satisfying as a biopic. The picture was beautifully filmed and set.
There was a beautiful score accompanying the movie (although I felt a bit
overdosed by the retro music that sometimes came up without much reason).
However, as a biopic, I would prefer the producer to explore more about Jobs
and his relationships with the people around him and know him as a person from
that angle. His many accomplishments could serve as backdrops to enrich him as
a visionary thus contrasting Jobs as a person. It is through that kind of
balance and contrast that a person’s character can be flashed out in a more
engaging manner.
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