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Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine
By NICOLAS RAPOLD
The transformative impact Steve Jobs has had on culture and society has become an article of faith since his much-mourned death in 2011. The secular canonization of Mr. Jobs, the mastermind behind Apple, is the starting point for “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine,” Alex Gibney’s trenchant new documentary, which asks with sincere curiosity: What’s the fuss about? And more to the point: What’s wrong with this picture?
Mr. Gibney, a prolific documentarian, not only charts Mr. Jobs’s extraordinary record of marketing and innovation, but also presents a merciless anatomy of a complicated public character. Mr. Jobs has already been the subject of dueling books, and will be incarnated by Michael Fassbender in a film this fall. But Mr. Gibney has produced his own penetrating cultural commentary amid the smorgasbord of interviews and archival Jobsiana, braiding together tough questions about the particular modern world Mr. Jobs helped create.
That world begins, in time-honored tech-world fashion, with the origin myth of Apple in the hacker days of Steve Wozniak and Mr. Jobs in the 1970s. Even here Mr. Gibney takes a moment to note how Mr. Jobs shortchanged Mr. Wozniak out of some money in a programming gig before hitching the story to Mr. Jobs’s boundless ambition and ability to make computing cool (and, later, normative). The hit parade follows: the first Mac revolution; Mr. Jobs’s departure from Apple in 1985; and the return of the king, with all the triumphant toys and i-candy that followed — Macs, iPods, iPhones, iPads.
Ruthless, canny and tenacious, Mr. Jobs emerges as a formidable captain of industry in the vein of past fierce innovator-businessmen like Thomas Edison, with a Svengali’s coal-eyed stare to boot. Former associates and an ex-wife are on hand to marvel, gripe and even weep. Yet as frequent shots of peaceful Japanese gardens remind us, Mr. Jobs was also way into Zen — or at least a certain interpretation of Zen that, as Mr. Gibney underlines, yielded the focus of a monk but not the empathy.
That disconnect, Mr. Gibney suggests, is echoed elsewhere in the Apple endeavor. His questioning voice-over repeatedly steps in to give a reality check to the high-flying story of best-selling products and core company values. Soon after recognizing the iPhone as a milestone, Mr. Gibney surveys Apple and Mr. Jobs’s less savory activity: backdated stock options, huge overseas tax shelters, scandalous Chinese factories and retaliatory police investigations.
Mr. Gibney’s film is a chunky mix, with a-little-too-proudly-rolled-out pop songs (even though they partly serve to echo Mr. Jobs’s self-regard). But even if this isn’t the iPhone of documentaries, it gets its point across, and unlike Mr. Gibney’s Scientology exposé “Going Clear,” this movie has a harder target (albeit with its own devoted following). He also brings out the uncanny details that help rediscover the strangeness of widespread cultural changes. When Mr. Jobs is reported to seethe at the news that he has fathered a child by his girlfriend, Mr. Gibney segues into the unveiling of Mr. Jobs’s apparently preferred offspring — a new Mac — suggesting some god-player figure out of science fiction.
By the end, Mr. Gibney has also skewered Apple’s marketing of its consumer devices as a form of creative expression (“Think Different”), and has drawn out the dissonance between that individuality and the danger of self-absorption. While his conclusion verges on a public awareness announcement, he re-evaluates Mr. Jobs and elucidates a cultural technological landscape that is too often taken for granted.
By NICOLAS RAPOLD
The transformative impact Steve Jobs has had on culture and society has become an article of faith since his much-mourned death in 2011. The secular canonization of Mr. Jobs, the mastermind behind Apple, is the starting point for “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine,” Alex Gibney’s trenchant new documentary, which asks with sincere curiosity: What’s the fuss about? And more to the point: What’s wrong with this picture?
Mr. Gibney, a prolific documentarian, not only charts Mr. Jobs’s extraordinary record of marketing and innovation, but also presents a merciless anatomy of a complicated public character. Mr. Jobs has already been the subject of dueling books, and will be incarnated by Michael Fassbender in a film this fall. But Mr. Gibney has produced his own penetrating cultural commentary amid the smorgasbord of interviews and archival Jobsiana, braiding together tough questions about the particular modern world Mr. Jobs helped create.
That world begins, in time-honored tech-world fashion, with the origin myth of Apple in the hacker days of Steve Wozniak and Mr. Jobs in the 1970s. Even here Mr. Gibney takes a moment to note how Mr. Jobs shortchanged Mr. Wozniak out of some money in a programming gig before hitching the story to Mr. Jobs’s boundless ambition and ability to make computing cool (and, later, normative). The hit parade follows: the first Mac revolution; Mr. Jobs’s departure from Apple in 1985; and the return of the king, with all the triumphant toys and i-candy that followed — Macs, iPods, iPhones, iPads.
Ruthless, canny and tenacious, Mr. Jobs emerges as a formidable captain of industry in the vein of past fierce innovator-businessmen like Thomas Edison, with a Svengali’s coal-eyed stare to boot. Former associates and an ex-wife are on hand to marvel, gripe and even weep. Yet as frequent shots of peaceful Japanese gardens remind us, Mr. Jobs was also way into Zen — or at least a certain interpretation of Zen that, as Mr. Gibney underlines, yielded the focus of a monk but not the empathy.
That disconnect, Mr. Gibney suggests, is echoed elsewhere in the Apple endeavor. His questioning voice-over repeatedly steps in to give a reality check to the high-flying story of best-selling products and core company values. Soon after recognizing the iPhone as a milestone, Mr. Gibney surveys Apple and Mr. Jobs’s less savory activity: backdated stock options, huge overseas tax shelters, scandalous Chinese factories and retaliatory police investigations.
Mr. Gibney’s film is a chunky mix, with a-little-too-proudly-rolled-out pop songs (even though they partly serve to echo Mr. Jobs’s self-regard). But even if this isn’t the iPhone of documentaries, it gets its point across, and unlike Mr. Gibney’s Scientology exposé “Going Clear,” this movie has a harder target (albeit with its own devoted following). He also brings out the uncanny details that help rediscover the strangeness of widespread cultural changes. When Mr. Jobs is reported to seethe at the news that he has fathered a child by his girlfriend, Mr. Gibney segues into the unveiling of Mr. Jobs’s apparently preferred offspring — a new Mac — suggesting some god-player figure out of science fiction.
By the end, Mr. Gibney has also skewered Apple’s marketing of its consumer devices as a form of creative expression (“Think Different”), and has drawn out the dissonance between that individuality and the danger of self-absorption. While his conclusion verges on a public awareness announcement, he re-evaluates Mr. Jobs and elucidates a cultural technological landscape that is too often taken for granted.
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