‘Steve Jobs’
‘Steve Jobs’
In Director Danny Boyle’s movie “Steve Jobs,” he turns on the camera to shoot the cataclysmic drama happening minutes before the curtain rises on the stage — just in time for Jobs (Michael Fassbender) to showcase the next Apple product. Three new product launches comprise the movie’s entire “plot.”
Rather than plot devices, Boyle plasters the screen in emotional travails through a visual labyrinth, the chilling maze of a psycho-drama that keeps us guessing will Jobs’ messy inner-state crash him or can he pull off the performance of his life, three times?
The movie “Steve Jobs” offers an amazing character study into a tragic hero — an otherwise courageous spirit despite one critical fault — and Jobs has one, which seems to be a case of schadenfreude, taking joy in another’s misfortune. The movie attempts to explain why Jobs might have been so intentionally cruel.
The movie images race so fast and furious, visual storytelling at its pulsating best, that the audience cannot turn away; from the very first scene we are swiftly tossed into voyeur status, gawking at the larger than life Jobs while he ruthlessly manipulates many he encounters in his path supposedly to democratize the personal computer for the first time in human history.
But how does a movie figure out a man who seems to never quite figure out himself? Jobs is all enigma: totalitarian dictator, pure artist, consummate conductor, abandoned infant, and a once loser turned loyal father.
His idiosyncratic tics baffle. In one calm frenzy before a product launch he silently flicks his finger at a beautiful deep blue crystal ashtray, which his assistant Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet) promptly removes. Why? Or, he decides impetuously that he needs a business white shirt with a pocket; she finds one to promptly iron — so he can showcase how the floppy disk fits perfectly in the pocket. In another scene, while dressed in an expensive suit, he removes his socks and shoes to dip his feet into a toilet then dries them with a towel. No rhyme or reason.
Still, the cinematography frames Jobs so amazingly well, how inexplicably trapped this man is inside himself. For example, when the film starts, we see a few clips from the infamous 1984 Super Bowl ad that Apple ran in George Orwellian black and white showing a balding leader in tight round glasses dictating to the masses, fulfilling the dire prediction of Orwell’s novel 1984. Much later in “Steve Jobs,” a close-up of his face fills the entire screen and now he is a balding man in tight round glasses mumbling to practice the speech he will perform to the masses. He has become what he distrusts most — ruthless arbitrary controlling power.
Another scene pairs Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels) and Jobs in a San Francisco Opera House hallway, brightly lit and elegant, as they approach each other from opposite ends of the long corridor, planting their faces inches apart, while music crescendos to their words spiraling higher and higher out of and beyond their control — which Jobs absolutely refuses to tolerate, this messy love discovered in platonic friendships.
Truly, though, the movie depicts Jobs as the most emotionally trapped in the relationship he has with his daughter, Lisa: At the first Apple product launch, when she is 5, he denies that he is her father; then for the second launch, now reunited, he talks to her high in the opera house rafters; and, finally, he is willing to be late for the third launch as he pleads with her on a rooftop to reconnect with him. The film ends as he waves to the crowd’s loud applause while staring at her off stage where she stands behind the curtains. They are reunited.
However, obvious are screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s conceits to dramatize his “character,” a real man now fictionalized, the facts are that Jobs was given away by his biological mother for adoption to parents who were unsure he could stay with them, so they loved him from afar that first year. After that we are in pure speculation land.
Maybe Jobs felt gravely abandoned twice, choosing absolute control as a way to console himself; in fact, to manifest this life ethos perhaps he became the marketing mastermind behind computer whiz Steve Wozniak’s (Seth Rogen) invention that had the unique stamp of end-to-end control. Sorkin and Boyle’s storytelling suggests this psychological angle.
They portray Jobs as a tragically flawed hero, one who will abandon others before he can be hurt, again; he viciously disconnects from Sculley and also never acknowledges Wozniak and his team, their stunning technological work to invent the Macintosh computer, despite his friend’s heartfelt, even desperate, request that Jobs do so.
His daughter and pugnacious assistant Hoffman force reality and love into his life against his every attempt to wriggle free. Yet his sincere computer-coding friend Wozniak pegs Jobs best: “It is not binary,” he tells Jobs as he walks out on him. “You can be decent and gifted at the same time.”
‘Hotel Transylvania 2’
In “Hotel Transylvania 2,” the opening scenes travel us through a foggy graveyard, in past the squeaky gates and up the stairs to a foreboding towering hotel. Then the fun starts. Prepare for some quality comedy slap-stick time with vampires, werewolves, a Frankenstein, and other mystery monsters.
At the story’s center are Mavis, the daughter of Dracula, and Johnny, an ordinary red-headed human, who are recently married; trouble brews for the entire cast of wacky characters when the newlyweds have their first child, Dennis. Question is whether Dennis will drop those vampire fangs by age 5 or will he remain only human?
The zany plot thickens when the clueless human mother-in-law attempts to understand her vampire daughter-in-law, Mavis. Meanwhile, Grandpa Dracula works hard to accept his grandson for whom he seems to be, an ordinary kind human little boy.
Despite all the wonderfully goofy animation detail, the story surfaces a vital theme: how well do we succeed and fail each other while trying to understand and bridge cultures? The ending comes as a total surprise and no spoiler moments shared here. Instead, treat the family to an early monster mash Halloween trick and treat.
Opera at the movies
Makalapua Stadium Cinemas will show the New York Metropolitan Opera’s performance of Richard Wagner’s Tannhauser — the fiery tale of true love, mere passion, and redemption at noon Saturday. An encore presentation is slated 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.