LOS ANGELES -- "The Reality Distortion Field." Anyone who's had an ambitious boss has used the phrase, though few probably realize that it was coined at Apple Computer in the early '80s to describe the impossible demands emanating from Steve Jobs.
The RDF makes a few appearances in director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's Steve Jobs -- including the view from the audience. And like Jobs' insistence on bending reason to fit his will, the result is something pretty spectacular.
Which is to say, Steve Jobs as a historical document is borderline laughable. As a moviegoing experience?
Hello.
Brisk, bracing and crackling with energy, the fusion of Boyle's stylish eye and Sorkin's tart tongue makes Steve Jobs a creation of elegant, user-friendly bliss, despite its unusual structure and occasional performance issues.
You know, like the original iMac.
Most of the Steve Jobs buzz has been around Sorkin's script, and for good reason. The dialogue pops and sizzles about like you'd expect from the screenwriter-as-auteur who gave us Moneyball, The Social Network, The West Wing and The Newsroom. The good news for Sorkin-haters is that it's not quite as preachy or overly clever as any of these, and it helps that you walk in understanding that the people speaking these lines truly were brilliant, biting lads and lasses.
Still, since it's impossible to faithfully recreate private conversations that took place 10, 20 and 30 years ago, it's hard to take much of this at face value. We are uploading a Jobs story warped by the Sorkin/Boyle Reality Distortion Field, which plays not only with the spoken words, but the events themselves, their context and meaning.
Much has been written and debated about these discrepancies, and you'll find no piling-on here. This is a movie review and, as a movie, Steve Jobs glows warmly and brightly with delicate tension-building that's made all the more extraordinary by the fact that we know exactly how the story ends.
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/jobs.inside.png" caption="Jeff Daniels in "Steve Jobs."" credit="Universal" alt="jobs.inside"]
Because the film skips through time with impunity, it could've easily crashed. There is a scene deep into the second act where Jobs (Michael Fassbender) and Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels) face off in two separate conversations, one at the film's present moment, another deep in its past. We flip wildly back and forth between these two talks, each informing the other in a daring, dizzying feat of grown-up filmmaking that is -- to borrow another of Sorkin's borrowed metaphors -- symphonic.
There are many themes in delicate balance here, like the tug-of-war between careerism and humanity, as Jobs' badly compromised relationship with his daughter Lisa looms large. In fact, it may be the only consistent through-line. Though Lisa's place in the film has been most widely criticized for artistic liberties, she is the most human thing about Steve Jobs. She may also have been, at some point late in his life, the most human thing about Steve Jobs.
The performances seem to serve the material, which is fine; Boyle's camera and Sorkin's script don't require showy acting. Fassbender boils beneath as he's done many times before, and uses that wolf-grin to great effect; Kate Winslet as PR maven Joanna Hoffman finally settles on a Polish accent halfway through the movie, but it's not disastrous; and Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak wins this year's Jonah Hill Award for Showing That a Comedic Actor Can Handle Drama.
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/aaa.steve_.jobs_.thm_.png" caption="Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs in "Steve Jobs."" credit="Universal" alt="aaa.steve.jobs.thm"]
In a world where we have Steve Jobs the book, Steve Jobs the Alex Gibney Documentary, Steve Jobs as played by Ashton Kutcher and probably someday Steve Jobs the Ben & Jerry's flavor, there are more than enough places to get at the truth of who Jobs was, what he did, and how he went about it.
As such, Steve Jobs doesn't need to do that -- and thank goodness. Because instead of another gauzy, comprehensive biopic, we got a great movie.