Steve Jobs

Genius does not always come with moral goodness or maturity. That’s an old but important lesson depicted in the otherwise too long and pretentious Steve Jobs, a biopic about the co-founder of Apple.

Steve Jobs was the Walt Disney of my generation, a genius at getting the best out of other people. Disney did not draw the cartoons and Jobs did not write the code for his Mac or iMac, but both had a clear artistic vision and pursued it zealously. Both men were flawed, though surely Jobs was the more amoral and loathsome of the two.

As the movie makes plain, there is no justification for Jobs’ abandonment of his daughter. He forces his ex-wife to grovel for a (relative) pittance and acts like a tyrant to employees. Jobs, like Disney, was a great pitchman. People called it “reality distortion,” since Jobs could make a person believe the “impossible” could be done. When the impossible was merely the improbable mislabeled, Jobs could get more out of a team than anyone. But when he lied to himself and to others about reality or demanded what couldn’t be done, Jobs failed himself, his company, and the people around him. Yet people will put up with a great deal to work with a visionary, and both Jobs and Disney were irreplaceable to their companies.

Actor Michael Fassbender is very good as Jobs and Kate Winslet is even better as Joanna Hoffman, Jobs’ marketing chief and “work wife.” But much of the supporting cast’s talent is wasted on endless talk about creating, speaking, and living.

The film’s Steve Wozniak character (Seth Rogen) points out to Jobs that being a decent human being or a genius is not a binary choice. The movie hints Jobs may have been learning this as he aged.