Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs is not only one of the most fascinating people of the 20^th and 21^st centuries but also one of the most influential. Co-founder of Apple Inc., his technological innovations have affected the very fabric of society. Just think about how omnipresent iTunes, iPads, iPods and iPhones are in our lives. He was a visionary with ambition to burn and a carefully crafted and distinctive public persona. It would seem only natural that his life would be ripe for cinematic treatment. Shortly after his death in 2011, Ashton Kutcher portrayed the man in a biopic entitled Jobs that performed modestly at the box office and was savaged by critics.

It only took a couple years for Hollywood to try again with Steve Jobs (2015), but this time with considerable pedigree in front of and behind the camera with Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) directing a screenplay written by Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) and starring Michael Fassbender (Shame) and Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road). The film opened wide and failed to meet its lofty projections despite going up against weaker movies. How could a film with that much artistic power fail to connect with audiences? Post-mortems done after it was pulled from theaters after only two weeks felt that the studio should have released it gradually, letting word-of-mouth build, that Fassbender wasn’t enough of a mainstream draw, that Jobs fatigue had set in, and that the nature of the film was difficult to market.

The film’s structure eschews the traditional biopic formula of a cradle to grave telling by adopting a three-act format with each one taking place right before the launch of a key product. The first act thrusts us immediately into crisis mode as Jobs (Fassbender) and his team are about to launch the Apple Macintosh in 1984. He wants the computer to say, “Hello,” but engineer Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg) tells him that it can’t be fixed in time, much to his boss’ chagrin.

The stakes couldn’t be any higher for the fledgling company as Jobs points out that two days prior they ran an television advertisement during the Super Bowl that more people remembered than who won the actual game. “Look at their faces when they see what it is. They won’t know what they’re looking at or why they like it but they’ll know they want it.” This key line of dialogue spoken in the first act demonstrates one of the man’s key strengths – knowing what people wanted even before they did. He was able to do this because he was a master manipulator, both on a large scale, and on a personal level, like how he browbeats his staff to do the seemingly impossible.

For example, there is a scene where Jobs chastises Hertzfeld for being unable to fix the Mac before launch: “You didn’t have seconds you had three weeks. The universe was created in a third of that time.” His employee responds without missing a beat, “Well, some day you’ll have to tell us how you did it.” Jobs lays into the man and threatens to humiliate him publicly. This scene is indicative of the kind of scintillating dialogue that Sorkin populates Steve Jobs with and the cast delivers it with blistering intensity.

The second act takes place four years later with Jobs launching the NeXT Computer, the crown jewel of his new company NeXT, which he founded after being fired by Apple when the Mac failed to sell. This act is less about the launch then it is about how Jobs was fired from Apple. His ego was out of control and his refusal to compromise was severely damaging the company. Through the rhythm of editing and the increasing tempo of music on the soundtrack, the film gradually builds to a crescendo as the hammer comes down on Jobs.

The third act takes place in 1998 as Jobs has rejoined Apple as CEO and is about to launch the iMac in what becomes a personal and professional triumph for the man. This final segment also attempts to humanize Jobs a bit and shed more light on his personal relationships with co-workers and loved ones.

Michael Fassbender jumps full on into the role as he portrays a brilliant, arrogant man that expects to get his way, like when he tells an assistant that they must turn off the exit signs in the room where the product launch is to take place. When she informs him that the fire marshal will not allow this he replies, “You explained to the fire marshal that we’re in here changing the world,” to which she tells him, “I did. But unless we can also change the property of fire he doesn’t care.” Jobs comes back with a very Sorkian response: “If a fire causes a stampede to the unmarked exits it’ll have been well worth it for those who survived. For those who don’t, less so but still pretty good.” Fassbender’s timing is on fire and this exchange is hilarious.

The film doesn’t shy away from Jobs’ less savory aspects, like his ugly confrontation with ex-girlfriend Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston) who claims that he is the father of her daughter Lisa. He is cold and cruel to her and Fassbender is unafraid to go there. Jobs’ solution with his ex is to continually throw money at her until she goes away. While the actor doesn’t look like the real man he finds a way to convey the essence of him in a way that Kutcher didn’t. Of course, he had much better material to work with thanks to Sorkin’s exceptional screenplay.

Kate Winslet as Joanna Hoffman, marketing executive for Apple, and Jobs’ confidant, matches Fassbender beat for beat. She is the voice of reason (“Do you want to try being reasonable, just, you know, see what it feels like?”) that keeps him in check when his ego threatens to take over. She also acts as his therapist and his sounding board. The actress portrays Joanna as extremely patient and strong-willed – she has to be going up against someone like Jobs. Winslet utilizes a nicely understated Polish accent and disappears into the role with her customary passion. Joanna serves as the film’s anchor for she is the constant through-line in all three acts as Jobs’ most loyal ally.

In a rare dramatic turn, Seth Rogen portrays Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple. He pops up briefly in the first act asking Jobs to acknowledge the people responsible for the Apple II, the company’s best-selling product at the time. He gets much more substantial screen-time in the second act when Woz confronts Jobs over his failings at Apple and the problems with the NeXT Computer. He tries to appeal to their long-time friendship and Rogen digs deep, demonstrating some terrific dramatic chops. He also deftly handles Sorkin’s rapid-fire dialogue and the technical computer jargon with ease.

For a film that is very dialogue-heavy, Danny Boyle covers a lot of ground with his restless camera, which conveys Jobs’ agile mind and his demanding nature. Finally, this energetic filmmaker gets to do Sorkin’s trademark walk and talk scenes and nails it. If there was ever a filmmaker born to do them it was Boyle. That being said, he tones down his trademark hyperactive kinetic energy in favor of a more poised approach. It is nice to see him change things up and let the actors and their dialogue have a greater emphasis. That’s not to say Steve Jobs is boring to look at – far from it – but he lets the actors provide the fireworks with their riveting performances.

It is a ballsy choice not to show the actual launches as that would be the traditional thing to do. The launches are well-documented – what happened before is not so widely known and ripe for dramatic interpretation. Steve Jobs is a fascinating portrait of a complex man. In many respects, it would make a good double bill with The Social Network (2010), also penned by Sorkin, as both films are about distant, megalomaniacal geniuses that made hugely influential advances in technology to feed their gigantic egos and in the process changed the world by affecting peoples’ daily lives.

It is easy to see why Steve Jobs wasn’t a commercial success. It doesn’t play by traditional biopic rules and features an unlikable protagonist. It eschews ingratiating itself for taking an unflinching look at a genius. The film sheds light on the man who was cruel to those around him. He was brilliant and didn’t care about what people thought of him and his inability or unwillingness to make personal connections ultimately makes him a tragic figure.

Contagion

For over two decades, director Steven Soderbergh has gone back and forth from independent to studio films with personal, experimental efforts like Schizopolis (1996) and big budget crowd pleasers like Erin Brockovich (2000). He’s fashioned himself something of a journeyman director trying his hand at a variety of genres over the years, from period history (King of the Hill) to the heist film (Ocean’s Eleven) to the war movie (Che), adopting a distinctive style for each one. With Contagion (2011), he can now add the disaster movie to the list. This film deals specifically with the deadly virus subgenre as he tracks an infectious disease that affects the entire world with alarming speed. Would Soderbergh go the high road with thought-provoking science fiction a la The Andromeda Strain (1971) and Twelve Monkeys (1995), or would he go the low-budget horror B-movie route like The Crazies (1973) and Warning Sign (1985)? Whereas most of these films rely on horror and science fiction tropes, Soderbergh eschews them for a much more realistic take, albeit with a sly wink to the master of disaster films, Irwin Allen by populating Contagion with a star-studded cast of A-listers (many of whom have either won or been nominated for Academy Awards) only to kill some of them off. However, this is where the similarities begin and end as Soderbergh applies the Traffic (2000) aesthetic, juggling multiple characters and storylines to show how technology not only helps identify the threat quickly but also helps it spread rapidly thanks to globalization and disinformation.


The film starts off on Day 2 of the outbreak with infected people in England, Japan and Hong Kong where we meet Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) on a business trip. She comes home to her husband Mitch (Matt Damon) and family in Minneapolis suffering from what seems like flu-like symptoms. She assumes that it is nothing more than jetlag but within a day she and her son are dead. The doctors can’t tell Mitch why they died and he’s left to take care of his daughter (Anna Jacoby-Heron) on his own. The World Health Organization in Geneva begins to identify all the cities where victims of the MEV-1 virus are appearing and are trying in vain to contain it. They send Dr. Lenora Orantes (Marion Cotillard) to Hong Kong in an attempt to track down the origins of the virus. Meanwhile, muckraking blogger Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) posts a clip of a man collapsing on a train in Japan and tries to peddle it to a newspaper in San Francisco but they aren’t interested. However, he soon assembles an impressive global readership that hangs on his every opinion and conspiracy theory, which not only spreads disinformation but also draws the attention of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) is leading an investigation into the outbreak in the United States and enlists the help of Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) who travels to Minneapolis and investigates Beth Emhoff’s death. Their goal is to try and control the spread of the virus.

Soderbergh shows how the CDC interact with local and national governing bodies to identify and deal with the virus while also taking us inside their laboratories where Dr. Ally Hextall (Jennifer Ehle) is working hard to find a vaccine. Soon, Homeland Security steps in and their representative (Bryan Cranston) meets with Cheever to raise concerns that the virus could be weaponized and used by terrorists to attack the United States. However, it soon becomes apparent that the problem is much more serious, affecting a large portion of the world. Soderbergh inserts all kinds of shots of people’s hands interacting with objects and other people. Every time someone coughs you wonder is this person sick and are they spreading the virus to others?

The always-reliable Matt Damon is Contagion’s emotional core, playing the character we get to know the best and therefore care about what happens to the most. He is heartbreaking early on as Mitch watches both his wife and son die and then finds out that his spouse was also cheating on him. He then has to pull it together and take care of his daughter. Damon is given moments to show how the strain of this all is taking its toll on Mitch and the actor really grounds the film in something tangible for the audience to hold onto. Think of him as the equivalent to Benicio del Toro’s soulful border cop in Traffic. Damon is so good as the relatable everyman trying to deal with things as best he can. Without him, Contagion would come across as a little too cold and clinical.

With the help of Cliff Martinez’s brooding, atmospheric electronic score, Soderbergh gradually cranks up the dread as the virus spreads and the situation gets increasingly worse as order breaks down – bureaucratically and then everything else follows in a domino effect with looting and rioting as people think about protecting themselves. Soon, we are hit with sobering apocalyptic imagery that starts off with deserted city streets filled with garbage and abandoned cars to government officials filling mass graves with scores of dead bodies.

Soderbergh is clearly drawing a parallel between the virus and technology, both of which spread great distances and in very little time thanks to cell phones and the Internet. He explores the notion of community breaking down with people becoming isolated, even more so thanks to technology. The film matches this speed by maintaining a brisk pace but does allow for the occasional moment where key characters reflect on what’s happening and how it affects not only them but their loved ones, co-workers, and so on. It is these moments where Scott Z. Burns’ smart, ambitious screenplay shines, allowing archetypes, like Laurence Fishburne’s no-nonsense executive, to show their human frailties.

Burns has clearly done his homework as he presents a scarily plausible viral outbreak based on the rare Nipah virus, which spread from pigs to farmers in Malaysia in the late 1990’s. Contagion is eerily relevant as it evokes real-life outbreaks like SARS, avian flu and the H1N1 swine flu, several of which are mentioned in the film. The script also shows the reaction to an outbreak on a personal level with Mitch and his daughter while also showing its global impact when the fear of transmitting the virus takes hold. This is important because the film throws around a lot of technical jargon and dispenses a lot of facts but Soderbergh has wisely enlisted an all-star cast to make it more palatable. Contagion is not the horror film Soderbergh has suggested it might be, nor is it Hollywood fluff like Outbreak (1995), but rather a slick, sophisticated disaster movie that should provide the director with his first substantial commercial hit in years.

DVD of the Week: Revolutionary Road

Between The Reader and Revolutionary Road, it’s safe to say that 2008 was been a very good year for Kate Winslet. She won or was nominated for all of the major acting awards for either one of these two films. She also won the big prize that she’s been chasing for some time, the Academy Award. Although she didn’t win it for Road, there were several critics who felt that she should have. Based on Richard Yates’ best-selling novel of the same name, Road attempted to capitalize on popular culture’s recent fascination with retro culture as evident by the success of the television show Mad Men, about New York City advertising executives. There was also a certain amount of anticipation for this film as it was the first time Leonardo DiCaprio and Winslet were reunited on-screen since Titanic (1997).

Set in 1950s suburban Connecticut, Revolutionary Road examines dysfunction lurking under the picture perfect, all-American facade of the Wheeler family. Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (Kate Winslet) have only been married a few years and have two children but the cracks are already starting to show. Their lives haven’t exactly turned out as they had dreamed: he works a boring 9-to-5 office job while she’s trapped in suburbia as a housewife. Frank and April are both very unhappy with their respective lots in life but they are locked into them because it is what society expects. They are supposed to be happy, after all they’re living the American Dream with two children and a nice house in an affluent suburb – so, why has the spark gone out of their marriage?

Ever since he started making films with Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio has really matured as an actor and only seems to improve with every subsequent film he does. Revolutionary Road is quite possibly his best performance to date. There is a scene, a flashback where Frank reveals his ambitions to April while they are courting. He says, almost wistfully at one point, “I wanna feel things. Really feel them, you know?” The scene is brief but very important because it provides fascinating insight into his character. Before Frank followed in his father’s footsteps, he dreamed of going to Paris where “People are really alive.” DiCaprio also displays the subtle nuances of his character in a scene where April and his two children surprise him after work with a birthday cake. On his face is a shamefully sad expression because, unbeknownst to his family, he has spent most of the day with another woman. Of course, they interpret his tears as that of joy but we know better.

DiCaprio still has dynamite chemistry with Winslet as evident in the scene where April proposes that they sell their house, he quit his job, and they use their savings to move to Paris like they dreamed of years ago. At first, it seems like an unrealistic proposition but her passionate reasoning, delivered with heartfelt conviction by Winslet, wins him (and us) over. She does an excellent job conveying someone who wants something more out of life and the impressive part of Winslet’s performance is how she conveys the arc of her character, how April gets more desperate and fed-up with her life with Frank. Winslet is not afraid to expose the raw emotional core of her character and this fearlessness is exciting to watch. She is also absolutely heartbreaking as a woman who feels trapped by the life she’s living. April doesn’t like what she and Frank have become.

Almost halfway through Revolutionary Road, Michael Shannon makes a show-stopping appearance as the son of the woman (Bates) who sold the Wheelers their home. His character went crazy and was subjected to electroshock therapy and now he’s a bundle of twitchy nerves but also seems to be the only person who understands why Frank and April want to drop everything and go to Paris. He also seems to be the only person who publicly acknowledges the problems between them. Shannon’s appearance gives the film a refreshing jolt of energy and lightens things up at just the right moments.

am Mendes also directed American Beauty (1999) and in some respects April is the female version of its protagonist Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey). Both are tired of their humdrum, predictably existence and desperately need some sort of change in their lives. However, both protagonists are products of their times: American Beauty is set in contemporary times while Revolutionary Road takes place in the ‘50s. Mendes shows how attitudes of society back then contribute to April’s sense of hopelessness. One of the hallmarks of Mendes’ films is the meticulous framing of scenes and the incredible attention to detail in terms of production design. This sometimes threatens to overwhelm the characters in his films. With Road, he wisely realizes that this is a character-driven piece and lets the talented cast do their thing. The result is some incredibly strong performances from his talented cast. This film really belongs to DiCaprio and Winslet and the way they bring their characters so vividly to life. Frank and April aren’t really likable characters per se but the two actors do their best to humanize them to a certain degree. Revolutionary Road depicts, with unflinching clarity, the reality of a married couple’s life versus the hopes and dreams they once had and how they reconcile the differences between the two.

Special Features:

There is an audio commentary by director Sam Mendes and screenwriter Justin Haythe. According to Mendes, the BBC owned the rights to Yates’ book and asked Haythe to adapt it four years ago. They shot the entire film on location and almost completely in sequence so that DiCaprio and Winslet really lived with their characters. Mendes says that the look of the film was not inspired by other films but a documentary about the suburbs and photographs from the era. Haythe talks at length about adapting the book to film – what was left out, changed and so on.

“Lives of Quiet Desperation: The Making of Revolutionary Road” is a very classy featurette on how this film came together. Winslet was a big fan of the book and really wanted to make it into a film. Mendes had just finished Jarhead (2005) and didn’t want to jump right into another film but Winslet worked on him for a year until he agreed to do it. It also took Winslet two years to convince DiCaprio to do the film and he loved the script and the chance to work with her again. This featurette also touches upon the challenge of working on location and how the fantastic look of the film was achieved.

Finally, there are five deleted scenes with optional commentary by Mendes and Haythe. There is a scene that was to reveal the Wheeler children earlier on in the film. There is also more footage of the Wheelers visiting with their next-door neighbours with DiCaprio delivering an excellent monologue that reveals more about his character. We see more footage of Frank commuting to work. There is also a flashback with the Wheelers seeing their new home. Mendes and Haythe talk about why this footage was cut and put it into context with the rest of the film.