Review: Aaron Sorkin's STEVE JOBS is a Theatrical Masterpiece

You can take the writer out of the theatre, but you can't take the theatre out of the writer. For the past 20 years, Aaron Sorkin has been one of Hollywood's most successful scribes. From THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT to THE WEST WING to THE SOCIAL NETWORK, and many more remarkably successful projects in between, he has continually redefined the way audiences appreciate complex and intelligent characters. However, the writer made his name with his 1989 Broadway play A FEW GOOD MEN. Three years later, when the now iconic story made its way to the big screen, Sorkin wrote the screenplay, and his career as a screenwriter was born. However, with his latest film, STEVE JOBS, which opens nationwide on Friday, Sorkin proves that he still knows how to write an incredibly powerful three-act stage play, even if it just so happens to appear on the big screen.

Unlike 2013's JOBS, starring Ashton Kutcher, which takes a more holistic look at the Apple co-founder, Sorkin has structured his film around three seminal events in Jobs' personal and professional lives; the product launches of three different computers, the original Mac in 1984, his follow-up company NeXT's signature machine in 1988, and the iMac in 1998. While many of the figures integral to Jobs' life are present at these events in the film, nearly all of their interactions are either heavily modified, or out-and-out fiction. Sorkin uses the launches as opportunities to inspect how Jobs, and his relationships, change throughout the years. In the film, these high-pressure events often lead to full-voiced arguments that didn't actually happen as scripted in real-life.

While there have been countless hand-wringing articles about this since STEVE JOBS's initial limited release, Sorkin has stood firm in saying that he did not write a biopic, and his intention was never to make a historically accurate film (echoing his comments after the release of THE SOCIAL NETWORK, for which he won an Oscar). Many of those lambasting Sorkin seem to be tech-enthusiasts who idolize Jobs, but don't realize that the practice of using historical figures as a jumping off point to tell a new, if not completely fictional, story is a much revered theatrical tradition.

There is nearly nothing in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE that even remotely mirrors Georges Seurat's real-life. Likewise, there is no reason to believe that Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein ever met at a bar and had a discussion that led to their greatest breakthroughs as suggested in Steve Martin's play PICASSO AT THE LAPIN AGILE. Like Sorkin, these writers found inspiration in the genius of historical figures and used that to create compelling, impactful stories. In fact, compared to those plays, STEVE JOBS is practically a documentary.

Jobs' Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who consulted on the film, told Deadline, "I saw a rough cut and I felt like I was actually watching Steve Jobs and the others, not actors playing them. I give full credit to (director) Danny Boyle and Aaron Sorkin for getting it so right."

Woz admits that much of the drama in the film is either repackaged or completely made up, but for him to say that Michael Fassbender's performance was true to life, is about as much of an endorsement of the film's authenticity as anyone should need.

While Fassbender doesn't physically resemble Jobs all that much, he possesses all of the maniacal drive and stubbornness that the real-life genius was known for. As now has become the thing of legend, Jobs was a notoriously controlling man who refused to compromise on his vision, often alienating even the people closest to him.

In the film, Sorkin and Boyle, draw a direct line between his personal need for control and his insistence that Mac products have complete end to end control, resulting in only two ports. While arguing over their first computer's design, Woz, played by Seth Rogen, says, "Computers aren't supposed to have human flaws; I'm not going to build one with yours."

While Sorkin does very little to soften Jobs until the end of the third act, Fassbender is still able to make him sympathetic throughout, even if he is never really all that likeable. It is early in awards season, but Fassbender's charismatic performance as one of our generation's most revered figures could very well earn him his second Academy Award nomination in three years.

The rest of the core cast, including Rogen as Woz and Tony-nominee Jeff Daniels as Apple CEO John Sculley, are equally as captivating. The two characters genuinely care about Jobs even when he doesn't deserve it, and they provide Fassbender with quality foils on which to unload Jobs' scathing tirades.

However, the true heroes of the film are Joanna Hoffman, Jobs' colleague and confidant, and his daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs. Academy Award-winner Kate Winslet plays Hoffman, while a trio of actresses (Perla Haney-Jardine, Ripley Sobo, Makenzie Moss) play Lisa throughout the years.

At one point in the film, Jobs says, "The very nature of people is something to be overcome," and the character lives by that mantra for the majority of film, but Hoffman and Lisa, through the understanding of friendship and the need for parental support, teach Jobs, in many ways, how to be human.

You rarely see Fassbender's Jobs as heartbroken as when Hoffman tells him how disappointed she is in him that he is not living up to the responsibilities of being Lisa's father.

While the majority of the "facts" in Aaron Sorkin's STEVE JOBS might not hold up upon inspection, the writer's command of the genre does. Sorkin has become a master at boiling down the essence of a character, real or imagined, and using that to tell a wholly satisfying story. Like he has done before with charismatic politicians, social media innovators, groundbreaking sports executives, and determined news anchors, Sorkin finds a way to make exceptionally intelligent characters relatable, without removing what made them exceptional in the first place.

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Check out the trailer below:

STEVE JOBS, starring Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, Katherine Waterston, and Michael Stuhlbarg, is rated R for language.

What did you think of Aaron Sorkin's theatrical take on the life of Steve Jobs? Let me know in the comments below, or on Twitter @BWWMatt. If you want to follow along with my "366 in 366" articles, you can check out #BWW366in366 on Twitter. Also, make sure to follow @BWWMoviesWorld on Twitter for all of the biggest news from the world of movies.

Photo Credit: Universal Pictures

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