jOBS

Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, died in October 2011. The company was the first to realise that there is no point in making computers for a handful of techies but for the technologically challenged like you and me. In the early 1980s, Apple made incredibly user-friendly machines that did with one click of the mouse what other personal computers required a whole series of correctly typed commands to do. And usually they weren’t. Ten years before he died, Jobs launched the iPod, a device that caused a veritable revolution in the music industry and in consumer electronics. You don’t have to be one of those fanatical Apple devotees to recognise its genius and its immense influence on what the world looks like now. You just need to open your eyes.

It thus comes as no surprise that there are not one but two biopics about Jobs coming out soon. We’ll have to wait a bit longer for the film by Aaron Sorkin, the man who even managed to turn the origins of futile Facebook into exciting drama, see The Social Network. The race to the silver screen was won by a film starring Ashton Kutcher. Demi Moore’s ex copies Jobs’ strange walk well, but my daughter could imitate that too. His arsenal of facial expressions is painfully limited, and his preference for the self-satisfied smirk is simply annoying. It’s the one he wears in all his hidden camera programmes and romantic comedies. The opening scene will make anyone worrying about a biography idolizing Jobs want to get up and leave. An auditorium goes crazy at every word Jobs says, though he has given better speeches, and the iPod is presented as though it were the Holy Grail. Fortunately, the rest of the film explains how Jobs made it to that point, and in doing so it also addresses Jobs’s less attractive side. Such as refusing to acknowledge a daughter or betraying his oldest friends.

The history of Apple is tamely presented in vignettes: from the first assembly in his parents’ garage to his forced departure and subsequent triumphant return. The film’s mediocrity contrasts problematically with Jobs’ rhetoric of innovation and excellence.

jOBS ●
US, 2013, dir.: Joshua Michael Stern, act.: Ashton Kutcher, Dermot Mulroney, Josh Gad, 122 min.