The Steve Jobs we see here is not one his most passionate customers would recognize. The Man In The Machine doesn’t discount all that Jobs accomplished, and what his work and public persona have meant to people. Gibney asks. “What were his choices?”
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Jobs initially wanted to call that computer the Claire and tried to talk his pregnant girlfriend into using the name for their unborn child. Laurene, the widow of Jobs, and current Apple officials did not cooperate in the production of the docu. That we like the shiny things they create? This sequence is both surprising and elegant: it stands out for being so different from the rest of the film, yet the transition to and from this sequence and its slower, simpler pace represent something Jobs never achieved. Even his innovation of making computers, telephones and music players infatuation-worthy – a love that’s directed not at fellow human beings, but at objects made in dubious (if not injurious) working conditions – is a questionable legacy. Most people post such questions on Facebook.
There’s a religion around Apple, and some won’t like it at all.
The first shot of Alex Gibney’s “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine” shows piles of bouquets laid outside an Apple Store on a gray day, much like the heartfelt tributes that lined London streets after Princess Diana’s fatal auto crash. Better still, Gibney might have ditched his well-meaning but not exactly earth-shattering conclusion that our love for our iPods and iPads has forced us into an isolated, emotionally constricted existence.
“I grew up on IBM and PCs and when I switched over to Mac it felt like I’d been liberated”, Gibney told Business Insider.
Gibney has been heading in a lot of directions lately. Though Jobs said they would split their fee 50-50, he lied about their $7,000 earnings, told Woz they were paid $700 and handed him $350. He has also found time in the past few years to make movies about the musicians Fela Kuti and James Brown and a few others too. “That’s Alex”. Incredibly, though, Gibney’s starting point is also his first stumbling block. But his work speaks for itself.
Nevins described him as a cool customer in the face of controversy, a factor that came in handy when the Church of Scientology unleashed its publicity firepower in the direction of the filmmakers.
“It’s interesting that the portrayal of Steve Jobs has gone through the years, from Noah Wyle to Michael Fassbender”, says Gibney.
Apple’s reaction has been more muted than that of the church. Somewhat surprisingly, there’s little evolution of him as a person. Jobs’ extraordinary achievements are given their due, but the film makes it abundantly clear that he could also be a hardhearted and self-centered S.O.B. But they don’t spend much time on those stories. Right now, I feel like I need to read a more moderate biography because my impression of the man is more negative than I would have ever expected. “And he was a performer, an evangelist, really”. Belleville says that in Jobs’ corporate universe, you only existed in three states: “He is seducing you”.
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“A phone is not a mythical device”, Gibney said. Mainstream documentary audiences tend to want investigations of known evils or a confirmation of decided heroes. All this was accomplished by a businessman who harbored fantasies of becoming a Buddhist monk, even as he authorized strong-arm legal tactics against a lowly tech reporter who dared to write about a prototype iPhone that had been inadvertently leaked before its release. It seems so misguided. The artist-technocrat who taught us to think different(ly)? You can reckon with it. You can take it on. Can we do more than just spreadsheets and word processors?
