09/09/2015
Review by David Anthony
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At the beginning of his documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, filmmaker and narrator Alex Gibney asks why so many were moved by the October 5, 2011 death of the former Apple CEO at the age of 56. It is a timely, vital question that moves this incisive and poignant reflection along. Alex Gibney’s 128 minute film is one of several posthumous attempts to unravel the complex odyssey of the innovative entrepreneur who perhaps more than anyone else has been credited with helping bring the world into an intimate relationship with digital communication via personal computing. For Apple aficionados, Steve Jobs looked larger than life; Gibney’s layered juxtaposition of vintage footage and cogent interviews suggests that this was precisely how he wished to be seen. His world was creative and controlled. Intentionality, invention and personal reinvention lay at the heart of this tale. Ironically, connections forged through Jobs’ serial innovations, while creating new online communities had a collateral effect of increasing isolation. Gibney and his interlocutors state that such contradictions were consistent with Jobs the person and that they powerfully mirror what digital age consumers seek. Gibney retells the now legendary saga of Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and the wonders wrought in a Palo Alto garage, itself now something of a shrine. The film makes clear that innovations rarely happen with the mythic grandeur that characterizes the memories we may have of them. These were always team efforts, facts obscured by power plays and effective marketing ploys. Jobs was never alone in innovating. He had to have people in the trenches to see to it that his ideas came to fruition. Moreover, regardless of how it started as the anti-IBM, Apple quickly grew to be as formidable a capitalist tool as its rival. Subverting a dominant paradigm, it effectively replaced it with its own. Utilizing revolutionary imagery, Apple effected a positional succession. In its ascent, Apple, with Jobs at the helm showed its corporate face, doing what he saw as in its interest, with literally global implications. It changed the world. Full disclosure: This text was generated on Apple devices. The writer had to concede that he drank the kool aid. Although his retinue of Apple products is comparatively modest, few of the company’s campaigns escaped notice. Even a brief inventory of the mark Jobs made on him could sound like an Apple ad. Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine speaks to a reality of before and after. It permits viewers to think about how we got where we are, and how we may be complicit in our manipulation. Apple deftly made its competitor a foil for George Orwell’s 1984; exiting this film we may well ask if freedom is slavery.