Half-done Job

**1/2

Why would the man considered perhaps the greatest marketer of our times need Ashton Kutcher to market him? That’s a question worth asking as you walk away from this largely hagiographic account of Steve Jobs,bathing him in halo and operatic music,signed off by that self-conscious half-grin that’s very Kutcher. People may have hated Jobs or loved him,but few didn’t admire him. Kutcher though is aiming only to be liked — a feeling too mild for Jobs’s world.

It’s not that the actor best known for lightweight comedies,for being Demi Moore’s ex,and lately for being some sort of social media savant — perhaps earning the stripes to be both the producer and star of the first Jobs film after his death — doesn’t try. The effort shows in the gestures,that gait,the walk,the glasses,the hair. Kutcher is even good in the scenes where he lashes out at the friends and family Jobs abandoned on the way. However,the film,based on a script by Matt Whiteley,doesn’t do more than checklist the things that we always knew about Jobs,telling his story through a series of product launches.

In doing that,it’s clearly focused more on the well-built myths about Jobs than trying to peel those off to look at the man. So he walked barefoot,so he did acid,so he hippy-footed his way through India,so he didn’t care much about formal college education — how did all that translate into the clever,shrewd,selfish,hard-driving businessman Jobs would become? Far from exploring it,the film encapsulates all of the above over a 10-minute sequence,ending with Jobs having an epiphanic moment,arms thrown apart,in the middle of a field.

Stern and Whiteley,in fact,skip over the harder parts of the Jobs story. Particularly the time he spent out of Apple to when he made his way back there. In this time,the daughter that he had rejected — saying that any of 1.5 million in the town could have fathered her — has made her way to acceptability and a place in his home. He has also married and fathered a son — after saying he had no time for diversions. What brought about that change is perhaps the biggest jump the film takes without any explanation.

Another galling gap is the film’s failure to examine Jobs’s heartlessness in rejecting the aforesaid daughter,after having once talked regretfully about being given up by his own biological parents,even as he names the pet project that he risked Apple with after her.

In its focus on Apple’s famed products,too,there is a hollowness to how the film approaches their creation. As Jobs storms in and vows with his words in situation after situation,everyone stands around in rapt attention. How that translates into the actual product is never shared.

Gad as Apple co-founder and its tech wizard,Steve Wozniak,gets a much more well-rounded role and delivers a nuanced performance as a man destined to be in the shadows,and for the most part,content to be there.

There are other good actors who drift in and out of roles,getting only a peripheral space in what remains a thoroughly Jobs-centric story. The Jobs outburst with Bill Gates over the phone is itself a tangent worth exploring.

A man whose vision changed the way the world viewed technology,embraced it even,never did care how he got there. Whether it was stepping on people’s feet,arguably stealing ideas,borrowing words of others (as the film hints),and cashing in on popular imagery (Einstein looms large). However,he knew that behind all that,lay the force of his ideas. “We are the round pegs in the square holes,” he said,pushing the world to change. This film manages to be both very,very round and very,very square.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com