"Could you teach me more things on the computer?"

Rating: 6/10 (23 December 2015)

My main criticism of this movie will be that it feels like a cliff notes version of the biography. I felt like the screenwriter read through the book and highlighted the parts that had the most dramatic interest, then organized them into story beats. Now, of course Danny Boyle made a great looking movie that is visually interesting and well edited. Of course the performances are award- worthy. But somehow I felt like this movie was delivering facts I had already learned without really getting me emotionally involved in the on screen drama. I've read a lot of books about the Beatles, but when I watched Backbeat, I was somehow able to imagine I was seeing a young Lennon and caring about where that story was going. That didn't really happen during Steve Jobs, except for the scenes with Lisa, which I think might have been a better story to focus entirely on. I do think the narrative device of setting the action during the product launches was a step towards narrowing a sprawling life and career into a specific movie going experience, but it still suffers from too much not being enough. There is a maxim in writing that says "Through specificity comes universality." I think the most universal scenes were the ones where he interacts with his daughter, and those were the scenes I most enjoyed.