Thou Shalt Have no Other Gods Before Me - Unless your Steve Jobs

Rating: 8/10 (3 November 2015)

The deification of technology is the latest in a long line of religious antecedents that belong to man's evolution. So it's no surprise that at the heart of Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle's parable Steve Jobs" lies a biblical Job with a contradictory message and the purest belief in technology as a force for good.
Boyle and Sorkin create a character out of a man that is from what one reads not a very accurate portrayal. Nevertheless, for the uninitiated viewer this hardly matters. One: Because they made a movie and two: Because Jobs himself may have been impossible to present as he truly was. What we get in this film, that sustains its momentum over the entire running time, is a talented, tortured and highly ambitious human being that tries to shape the future while negating his past.
Along the stellar performances by Michael Fassbender as Jobs, Kate Winslet as his marketing chief Joanna Hoffman, Seth Rogan as Steve Wozniak and Katherine Waterston as Job's former girlfriend Chrisann, are we entering three different product launch events from 1984 to 1998. A period which is broken up in three acts and works as a fluid play whose rapid-fire dialogue is augmented by carefully crafted visual extensions, precise camera angles and a very effective soundtrack by Daniel Pemberton.
The faith in technology that Jobs possessed in order to change our lives is very much evident, as well as his lack of many of the social skills that balance out a gift which drove him to all new heights.
Boyle and Sorkin focus on Jobs relationship between him and his daughter Lisa. And even if time-lines and events are shifted and invented, the final confrontations are moments of heartbreaking insight that reveal to us the segregating pain of creativity, its necessity and its elusive nature. For this Jobs reached for the stars and found the core of love amidst his life processor.
And yes, I believe that Steve Jobs was an unusual, frustrating and simply ingenious person that no movie or book can do justice. But sometimes it's not so much about how it was, but about how it feels. And this movie that bears his name has more than its share of palpable emotions that instead of simply inform actually enlighten.