‘Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine’ movie review

So how do you reconcile these two extremes?

“The Man in the Machine“, Alex Gibney’s engrossing, at times unflattering documentary on the Apple impresario, Jobs was a key player in the steak as well as the sizzle, being present at the creation of the personal computer but really making his mark in finding creative ways to sell it and subsequent Apple products like the iPhone and the iPad. Gibney gained access to this footage and threads it throughout the film, where we see a visibly irritated Jobs tackle the SEC’s questions about Apple’s practice of backdating stocks for employees. Gibney has created a superb portrait of a trailblazer who left many burn victims in his path.

Starting at the end – Jobs’ 2011 death from pancreatic cancer at the age of 56 – so as to sidestep the chronological cradle-to-grave approach, Gibney kicks things off with the death of Jobs by interviewing anonymous ordinary people expressing what seems to be an inordinate level of grief for a member of the computer and business communities.

YouTube/Magnolia Pictures ” Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine.”They are about human psychology”, he tells us. The Man In The Machine doesn’t discount all that Jobs accomplished, and what his work and public persona have meant to people. An enduring fascination with Zen Buddhism and many experiments with LSD (barely mentioned here but prominent in Ashton Kutcher’s 2013 Jobs) convinced him that the personal computer and other refinements would be more effective than political activism. Woz should’ve woken up the instant Jobs reportedly brought him the first Apple invoice for computers, but had surreptitiously changed the amounts to benefit Steve Jobs and cheat Woz. But the director does see Jobs’ power as coming from what he represented as much as who he was. The exception to this rule is the iPhone’s ironic and infamous “alone together” phenomenon, which Gibney attacks with acerbic wit despite unabashed fondness for his own smartphone. Wozniak, for the record, said he would have given Jobs the money if asked, but it was the fact that Jobs lied to him that hurt the most. Surely he, if anybody, would’ve seen what a monster this man was, how he treated others and Wozniak himself.

In order to avoid putting license plates on his vehicle, Jobs would lease a new silver Mercedes every six months, and was notorious for parking his license plate-free cars in handicapped spots. While the unauthorized documentary offers little new information about its subject, it’s a well-crafted overview of Jobs’ career. You’ll hear stories of Jobs controlling his relationships with the press. His interviews with Jobs’ friends, family and peers-Nolan Bushnell, Michael Moritz, Sherry Turkle, Daniel Kottke-lend the most insight, both into whom Jobs was and why we all go gaga over Apple devices. “With tears in his eyes and his voice breaking, Belleville read something he wrote about Jobs, “[His] was a life well and fully lived, even if it was a bit expensive for those of us who were close”. Remember when Jobs refused to acknowledge his daughter Lisa, and sued to have all paternity claims from his ex-girlfriend Chrisann Brennan legally dismissed? But his work speaks for itself.

That interpretation of Jobs is a familiar one. The documentary acknowledges Jobs’ extraordinary successes.

Rather than explore and embrace the contradictions within Jobs (“he had the focus of a monk but none of the empathy” is the best he can do), Gibney puts the hammer down. “Fuck everything else”. “Perhaps I should spend a moment… asking myself what in buying and using this product am I doing?”