Steve Jobs movie: Michael Fassbender as the artist formerly called Jobs

Jobs was the leader, guru and saviour of what would become the largest publicly traded company in the world by market capitalisation, but he did not give a hoot for the accepted principles of business. In the Jobs universe, MBAs and standard-issue chief executives were, at best, scared followers and, at worst, callow fools.

The thesis of Boyle's movie, especially Sorkin's script, is that Jobs was a revolutionary for one reason and one reason alone: he was an artist.

It is no accident that Sorkin's script is set not in tech labs or board meetings, but almost entirely backstage during pivotal Apple product launches; it locates Jobs as, fundamentally, a writer, producer, director and performer. It puts him in the context of the symphonic conductor; the maestro; the impresario; the unveiler of beauty. It allows for an abundance of such metaphors as Jobs as sculptor, his thing of computational beauty hidden under a cloth that he knows must be raised only at the precise moment.

With this movie, which may or may not have much to do with the real Steve Jobs, Sorkin, Boyle, actor Michael Fassbender and producer Scott Rudin are collectively making the naked play that self-empowered artists are the true "disrupters," using their control of the life narrative of the most innovative figure, ever, in American business to claw back the term from the venture capital, business school, TED Talk, Ideas Week crowd, who claim, but cannot embrace, artistry.

It is saying that the team-built, groupthink Uber of this, the dull GrubHub of that, the low-impact Airbnb of the other are all the work of overpraised hacks - when compared to Jobs, who changed the world.

The movie is making the case that to study Jobs is to study the transformative power of the arts. It is saying that his contribution to history is akin to that of Leonardo da Vinci, not Bill Gates. It is arguing that Jobs was more John Lennon than Big Blue. And since Jobs died in 2011, this is an early salvo in the argument about his place in history and, by extension, a power grab for the artist as the true fountain of innovation.

This film takes the existing Jobs narrative, which is mostly a tech-and-B-school narrative, and turns into an apologia for the demanding, uncompromising, pain-in-the-neck auteur. We've no choice but to be this way, the film claims. Put up with us! For we're far more valuable than you think. Just look at Steve Jobs! You wanna give up your iPhone now? Thought not. You just had to pay its price. And you'll pay for the new upgrade, too. Happily.

And these filmmaking men - at least tacitly aligning themselves with their subject - are making the associated play that America has always, to its deficit, been deeply ambivalent about its creative geniuses, its best content providers, invariably resisting them when they assert that the best movies, the finest TV shows, the grandest ceremonial productions, the best opening ceremonies to the Olympic Games, are the product of one great artistic vision, flowing from an artist-clairvoyant who needs funding and support, but not second-guessing.

At one point in the film, a tech journalist opines to Fassbender's Jobs that he could not work in the computer business, because change comes too quickly. It is a cheap but effective moment of dramatic irony, at the journo's expense. At the expense of all journos.

"Just wait," says the character of Jobs, the man who inarguably did more to destroy the economic viability of the news and media business than any other individual.

Steve Jobs is arguing that when an artist claims to understand the intersection of human insecurity and desire, even though that sweet spot changes every few minutes, we would all be advised to shut up and listen.

Of course, the Sorkins of the world think we don't. We see the Steve Jobs of the world as sacred monsters. We are drawn to them in the theatre but suspect we don't need them in life. We despise their inability to function as, say, decent parents or generous colleagues, capable of giving credit where it is due. We have a hunch that they are just ego-driven containers of blather. We're programmed not to see their worth. Some of us view them as absurdly, hopelessly male.

Thus Steve Jobs goes out of its way - far, far, out of its way - to distinguish Jobs from the skill set that we generally accept is crucial for our new information-driven economy, or even for moral worth in modern society. Sorkin does not hesitate to kill off the competing identities. Steve Wozniak was the engineer - a nice guy, sure, but also a guy who failed to understand that people wanted the closed Macintosh system for which Jobs advocated, arguing, wrongly, that people instead wanted flexibility, compatibility and the chance to customise to their own tastes. That is the engineer's argument. The artist - Jobs, natch - rejects that and decides for the people what is beautiful and worthy, and gives it to them in a translucent case, where they think they can see how it works, but cannot, really. And thus he makes them happy. Again when what they want changes, he just gives them what they want, and sends the bill.

In this movie, the main function of John Sculley, one-time Apple chief executive, is to destroy the notion that innovation comes from the business crowd. Sculley, the film argues, was no fiscal fool, but he'd previously run a company, Pepsi-Cola, that sold sugar water, which no artist worth their salt would ever do. In the film, Sculley, played by Jeff Daniels, is reduced to the critic who panned a play by Henrik Ibsen, to the museum director who dismissed Claude Monet.

Steve Jobs does include the argument that you can be a great artist and a generous, decent person at the same time, but it quickly bares its teeth and uses Jobs to bite the head off that weak, second-banana line of Wozniakian thinking. Or does it?

If you want to see the limits of the auteur-artist's power, you need only watch the last few minutes of this film when we see the kinder, gentler side of Jobs, a man whom, until that point asserted, has only scorn for such weaknesses. Therein, the great one is felled by the love of his daughter.

Is this what happens when the artist ages? Is the movie saying the innovator always weakens? Is this about the accumulation of kinder, gentler wisdom, or is this the pathetic last act of a flailing genius who has run up against his sell-by date?

I doubt Sorkin and his pals really know themselves. Perhaps they decided they had to back off and engineer a way for life to destroy their sacred monster. For business reasons.

Steve Jobs will debut in Australian cinemas on January 14, 2016.

Chicago Tribune