This weekend, the much awaited Steve Jobs film opened in San Francisco and select cities. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who also pennedThe Social Network, the 2010 drama about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, had many more years of biographical material to work with around Jobs and it results in a more interesting film, which takes place over three acts?each one tied three of the most important product launches in Jobs?s career: the original Macintosh in 1984, the NeXT in 1990, and the iMac in 1998?is less about computers and more about humans.
The launches are a backdrop, a kind of play within the play, to something more compelling: Jobs? broken relationship with his daughter, Lisa Brennan. That is the driving force behind the film.
With that as his aim, Sorkin takes creative license with some of the events in Apple?s history and Jobs? own life?so don?t expect a surgically accurate biopic. Jobs? other family, for example, isn?t even mentioned. The movie, Sorkin said, is intended to be a ?painting instead of a photograph.? And thanks to director Danny Boyle of Slumdog Millionaire fame, and cinematographer Alwin H. Küchler, it?s a visually stunning one.