Arts & Events

Alex Gibney's new biopic about Steve Jobs—the charismatic force-and-face forever associated with the rise of the iRevolution—is a long (127 minute) scramble of a film that lacks the designed beauty and functional simplicity of an Apple product. It's more like the kind of term paper compiled in the era of Google searches. 

The film sometimes feels like an obsessive's scrapbook, filled with every public domain photo of Jobs that could be found within easy reach and video clips of middling interest culled from scores of public and private archives. It took exhaustive research to pull all these scraps together. Unfortunately, the experience of wading through it all onscreen is also exhaustive. 

 

There are revelations aplenty about the private life of Mr. Jobs—kick-started into life as an orphan, unable to feel fully comfortable with children of his own, a self-made man who was, by turns, creative cheerleader of innovation, a cunning curmudgeon and a cutthroat, manipulative backstabber. 

The documentary floods the screen with the Many Faces (and haircuts and beards) of Steve Jobs—but to the point that it becomes consistently off-putting. One moment we're looking at the iconic image of Jobs with his Beatles-era hairdo (and looking too much like Ashton Kutcher), the next minute, we're tossed a black-and-white photo of Jobs as a toddler, followed by an interview with a gaunt Jobs ravaged by disease, followed with a shot of a clean-shaved Jobs, beaming in a suit and tie, framed by a follow-up portrait plucked from his high school yearbook.

Instead of a chronological, evolutionary experience of watching a talented young man slowly age into a sick and ravaged elder, it's more like spending two hours in a house occupied by 16 different competing physical versions of the host—constantly crossing paths on a roller coaster ride through a time warp. 

Gibney captured 50 great interviews for his film, with speakers ranging from scholars of Electronica, to former friends and coworkers and one former girl friend. 

One of Gibney's expressed goals in this documentary was to illuminate the "contradictions" of Jobs' personality. In an interview with Chronicle, Gibney provided an example of some of these contradictions, calling Jobs a "fantastic performer" but noting he could also be "ruthless, cruel and totally self-aggrandizing." But these are not contradictory traits. (Think Donald Trump.) 

The contradictions in the Jobs saga stem from the discord between two competing versions of the Jobs persona. On one hand, there is the widely embraced public perception of Jobs as a talented, self-possessed maverick, a handsome and gifted public speaker and a Disrupter for the Common Good. 

On the other hand, there is the shadow side of Jobs, the personality that was never on public display and was only known to those close to the entrepreneur. In Gibney's film, the rumors of the angry, tyrannical Jobs remain just that—rumors. We hear his partner Steve Wozniak, complain about Jobs lying about a large check in order to walk off with most of the proceeds. We hear several unsung coworkers reminisce about the pressures (and then gleefully recall the highs) of working for Apple. We hear Chrisann Brennan, Jobs' girl friend talk about the growing friction in their relationship and how he greeted the news that she was pregnant ("His jaw clenched," he stormed out of the house and slammed the door behind him). 

Even though Jobs was worth millions, he tried to claim poverty to avoid paying childcare for his daughter Lisa—when that ruse failed, he finally agreed to pay $500 a month. (And then he added insult to injury by naming his first Apple computer—his real "baby"—the "Lisa.") As Brennan tells Gibney: "He didn't know what human connection was, but he was part of creating technology that connected the world." 

But the negative impressions don't stick. We largely see Jobs as the genial, silver-tongued charmer. We don't see footage of him disparaging underlings or hurling verbal flame-grenades at colleagues or competitors. There's only one scene of Jobs presiding over a meeting of Apple "creatives." He is clearly in charge and he's dismissive of challenges but he does not allow the cameras to catch him being a thundering bully or a Class-A A-hole. 

One of the problems with the film's interviews is that Gibney's disembodied, off-camera voice is heard throughout, steering the conversations. But Gibney didn't bother to wear a microphone so his comments are often dim and difficult to hear. 

Gibney makes good use of his interview with Sherry Turkle, whose best-selling book, Alone Together, describes how electronic devices and "social" media have actually damaged the experience of human interactions. An entire generation has now grown up entranced by portable electronic devices that solicit our constant attention. Contemplating these "electronic navels" can leave people feeling connected to hundreds of friends and strangers around the world but, at the same time, leave them totally estranged from the people who are actually standing and sitting alongside them in real time and real space. 

Inevitably, Gibney prominently features Apple's 1984 Superbowl ad (the one where the legions of mindless, grey minions march into a theater to watch their Leader on a large screen, only to be blasted out of their State-inflicted stupor by a young blond rebel in spandex shorts who throws a sledge-hammer at the screen, smashing it to smithereens). It was widely understood that the Leader in this Orwellian presentation was Microsoft. This was Apple's declaration that rebels, discontents and insurgents (all code words for "young people") could topple the established giants. 

But what came in the aftermath of Apple's first personal computers? The iPod. If you think about it, the iPod was the antithesis of the anti-1984 Hammer of Freedom. It was far from "liberating." It was a device that turned self-directed individuals into tractable masses—much like the slack-faced, grey-suited spectators in the 1984 Apple ad. The iPod was a device that, once plugged into your ears, unplugged you from society. The iPod provide a personalized playlist of sonic escapism and social retreat. No need to listen to the roar of traffic, the babble of nearby conversations, the sound of encroaching alarms—you carried a thousand sound tracks in your pocket and an endless parade of rock bands in your head. 

How many people were in on the unspoken joke? The iPod, after all, was an incarnation of a famous sci-fi nightmare. Remember "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," a cautionary tale about aliens who infiltrated cities and slowly took control of human bodies by attaching "pods" to the back of human necks? 

One of the most effective points Gibney makes in this documentary comes near the end, when he explores the working conditions of Apple's Chinese employees. Long hours and low pay (that routinely drives workers to jump to their deaths from the upper stories of their factories) and hazardous conditions (that repeatedly resulted in deadly and horrific fires inside locked work-lofts with no means of escape). 

Here is one the worst of the actual contradictions Gibney unearths. Both Apple and Google have cultivated a sense that they were "different" from the grey-faced corporate monoliths that proceeded them. Unlike Microsoft and IBM, Apple and Google sported fun-loving, self-mocking names and dressed their corporate logos in a kindergarten array of bright, primary colors. 

But, as Gibney points out, both Apple ("Think Different") and Google ("Do No Harm". "Don't Be Evil") draw obscene profits off the backs of overworked low-wage labor in overseas sweatshops. And both corporations secretly set up off-shore tax havens (in Apple's case, in Ireland) to avoid paying US taxes. 

And Jobs secretly conspired to "back-date" stock purchases to enrich himself and his closest partners. And, during a videotaped court deposition filmed in the last months of his life, Jobs lies to the camera, claiming he knows nothing about how such deals work. 

This is one of the few, true moments where the word "contradiction" rings true. For, finally, this is not the sweet-faced, Beatle-haired Steve we grew up loving. This is a wounded and dying man, in obvious pain and discomfort, perjuring himself while sitting uncomfortably in a courtroom chair. 

After Gibney's doc, I think I'm ready for a little escapism. Up next, I'll be renting Danny Boyle's "true story of the life of visionary Apple CEO Steve Jobs" starring Michael Fassbender in the title role. 

 

And then there's Ashton Kutcher taking on the job of Jobs in the 2013 film.