Steve Jobs Is Mediocre, But with Great Young Actresses
Film: Steve Jobs (2015). Young Actresses: Perla Haney-Jardine, Makenzie Moss, and Ripley Sobo.
You probably already know who Steve Jobs was: a computer innovator and one of the founders of Apple, who died in 2011 at age 56. This movie plays on public intrigue with his image and tries to introduce us to the "real" Steve Jobs (played by Michael Fassbender, X-Men: First Class). It takes place during three different product launches throughout Jobs's career, one in 1984, 1988, and 1998. There's a lot of technical talk about the computers and how to manage Apple, but despite the great cast - Fassbender is excellent as Jobs, and former young actress Kate Winslet ( Divergent) received a Best Supporting Actress nod as his assistant Joanna - it sometimes feels as mechanical and lifeless as a computer.
Fortunately, the movie devotes almost equal time to Jobs's personal life, specifically his relationship with his ex-girlfriend Chrissann and their daughter Lisa. This is where the young actresses come in; each one plays Lisa at a different age: Makenzie plays her at age 5 in 1984, Ripley at age 9 four years later, and Perla (whose previous credits include a brief, lineless role in Dark Water) is Lisa at 19. The scenes between Jobs and Lisa easily have the most heart and emotion of the movie.
Joanna and five-year-old Lisa
In Jobs's first scene with Lisa in 1984, he harshly corrects her when she tells Joanna, "My dad named a computer after me," saying that his computer, the Apple Lisa, is an acronym for Local Integrated System Architecture and is not named after her. He gives her one of his new computers, the Apple Macintosh, to keep her occupied while he argues with Chrisann, who's angry that Jobs won't support them or acknowledge Lisa as his daughter. But everything changes when Jobs sees that Lisa has used the MacPaint program to draw an abstract doodle. He teaches her how to save it, and they bond over the computer. Makenzie and Fassbender have some good chemistry together in this scene.
Lisa at age 9 in Jobs's dressing room
Four years later, with Ripley playing her, Lisa’s relationship with her dad has improved; she’s very much a typical, inquisitive nine-year-old, who now feels comfortable enough around Jobs to pester him with questions and interruptions while he tries to prep for his demo. This film doesn’t portray Jobs in a purely positive light (which is more than I can say for some biopics, like Trumbo) but also addresses his flaws. He can be a jerk to his employees throughout, and even in 1988, he still isn't the father that Lisa needs him to be. It's implied that he does care about her (Chrisann is becoming unstable, and when Jobs learns that she threw a bowl at Lisa, he threatens to have his employees kill her) but that he has no idea how to show it (when she hugs him and whispers, "I want to live with you," he just stands there awkwardly and doesn't hug her back).
Teenage Lisa argues with Jobs
The 1988 scenes set you up to think that Jobs and Lisa will grow closer, so it's a disappointment to find them angry and barely speaking to each other ten years later. We get a little of the reason for this - something to do with Chrisann selling the house that Jobs bought for her and Lisa - but it feels rushed and incomplete, and so does the ending. It ends, rather abruptly, with Lisa watching Jobs stride out onstage for his next demo. This is one of the flaws of Steve Jobs to me. Because of the structure of the timeline, three specific dates set over fifteen years, the movie skips over far more than it actually shows us. The characters reference things that we were shown in the previous segments of the film, but they never really talk about what happened during the long years inbetween. In 1984, Jobs gives a quote to a magazine that "28 percent of the male population in the United States" could be Lisa's father; in 1998, she reads it online and confronts him. In 1984, Jobs tells Lisa that his computer isn't named after her, but in 1998, he confesses, "Local Integrated System Architecture doesn't even mean anything. Of course it was named after you." Despite this film's attempt to flesh out the "real" Steve Jobs, it never feels very real to me.
LINKS
Premiered at the 2015 New York Film Festival.
You probably already know who Steve Jobs was: a computer innovator and one of the founders of Apple, who died in 2011 at age 56. This movie plays on public intrigue with his image and tries to introduce us to the "real" Steve Jobs (played by Michael Fassbender, X-Men: First Class). It takes place during three different product launches throughout Jobs's career, one in 1984, 1988, and 1998. There's a lot of technical talk about the computers and how to manage Apple, but despite the great cast - Fassbender is excellent as Jobs, and former young actress Kate Winslet ( Divergent) received a Best Supporting Actress nod as his assistant Joanna - it sometimes feels as mechanical and lifeless as a computer.
Fortunately, the movie devotes almost equal time to Jobs's personal life, specifically his relationship with his ex-girlfriend Chrissann and their daughter Lisa. This is where the young actresses come in; each one plays Lisa at a different age: Makenzie plays her at age 5 in 1984, Ripley at age 9 four years later, and Perla (whose previous credits include a brief, lineless role in Dark Water) is Lisa at 19. The scenes between Jobs and Lisa easily have the most heart and emotion of the movie.
Joanna and five-year-old Lisa
In Jobs's first scene with Lisa in 1984, he harshly corrects her when she tells Joanna, "My dad named a computer after me," saying that his computer, the Apple Lisa, is an acronym for Local Integrated System Architecture and is not named after her. He gives her one of his new computers, the Apple Macintosh, to keep her occupied while he argues with Chrisann, who's angry that Jobs won't support them or acknowledge Lisa as his daughter. But everything changes when Jobs sees that Lisa has used the MacPaint program to draw an abstract doodle. He teaches her how to save it, and they bond over the computer. Makenzie and Fassbender have some good chemistry together in this scene.
Lisa at age 9 in Jobs's dressing room
Four years later, with Ripley playing her, Lisa’s relationship with her dad has improved; she’s very much a typical, inquisitive nine-year-old, who now feels comfortable enough around Jobs to pester him with questions and interruptions while he tries to prep for his demo. This film doesn’t portray Jobs in a purely positive light (which is more than I can say for some biopics, like Trumbo) but also addresses his flaws. He can be a jerk to his employees throughout, and even in 1988, he still isn't the father that Lisa needs him to be. It's implied that he does care about her (Chrisann is becoming unstable, and when Jobs learns that she threw a bowl at Lisa, he threatens to have his employees kill her) but that he has no idea how to show it (when she hugs him and whispers, "I want to live with you," he just stands there awkwardly and doesn't hug her back).
Teenage Lisa argues with Jobs
The 1988 scenes set you up to think that Jobs and Lisa will grow closer, so it's a disappointment to find them angry and barely speaking to each other ten years later. We get a little of the reason for this - something to do with Chrisann selling the house that Jobs bought for her and Lisa - but it feels rushed and incomplete, and so does the ending. It ends, rather abruptly, with Lisa watching Jobs stride out onstage for his next demo. This is one of the flaws of Steve Jobs to me. Because of the structure of the timeline, three specific dates set over fifteen years, the movie skips over far more than it actually shows us. The characters reference things that we were shown in the previous segments of the film, but they never really talk about what happened during the long years inbetween. In 1984, Jobs gives a quote to a magazine that "28 percent of the male population in the United States" could be Lisa's father; in 1998, she reads it online and confronts him. In 1984, Jobs tells Lisa that his computer isn't named after her, but in 1998, he confesses, "Local Integrated System Architecture doesn't even mean anything. Of course it was named after you." Despite this film's attempt to flesh out the "real" Steve Jobs, it never feels very real to me.
LINKS
Premiered at the 2015 New York Film Festival.