Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Aaron Sorkin against the cult of Steve Jobs – publico

                 

                         
                     
                         
                     
                         

                 

 
 

“Things do not become different just because you say they are.” It is one of the keys that the film director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin dedicated to visionary boss of Apple, Steve Jobs (1955-2011) : the existence of a “reality distortion field” that seemed to surround the boss of Apple. Gather up too, and everything begins to be colored by his “iVisão.”

It was there that “reality distortion field” that Aaron Sorkin wanted to look. The American playwright of 54 years wrote A Few Good Men (Rob Reiner, 1992, based on his play, with Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson), Charlie Wilson’s War (Mike Nichols, 2007 with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts), The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010, for which he won an Oscar) and Moneyball – Play Risk (Bennett Miller 2011, with Brad Pitt) and created the series The West Wing (1999-2006) and The Newsroom (2012-2014). It is one of the few contemporary American writers with a “brand” copyright instantly recognizable, so subordinate to the power of the word, of dialogue, to the point of it, more than the director, the real author of his films. (And all that has been said of Steve Jobs has literally marginalized the face of the film director, Briton Danny Boyle, though author of Trainspotting or Slumdog Millionaire ?, and signing here one of his best works.)

The critic Richard Brody, in a column published in the journal New Yorker , speech Sorkin as “excellent scenes copyright face-to-face confrontations and fair dialectic that refer themselves to other times, they would not have the same claw or the same pace – and most likely would not exist – if they were conducted by e-mail or through social networks. ” Not by chance, everything in this film that starts in 1984 with the presentation of the original Mac, and ends in 1998 with the launch of the famous translucent blue iMac and stems before the popularity of Skype and video calling and iPhone invention stems face-to-face. Steve Jobs is a relentless succession of Socratic dialogues and conversations the two (or three) that advance the story. An online test, Brett McKay pointed out that “our conversations can help us to discover things about others, and about us, which otherwise would have remained hidden; can trigger transformative or even revelations understandings “. And that is precisely what Sorkin demand with their dialogue.

There are two emblematic phrases in the screenwriter’s career. A: “walk with me” central to the narrative progression of The West Wing , where the halls of the White House serve as a metaphor for the labyrinths of politics where the team presidential advisors narrative center seek to navigate the issues they face. Another: the “you can not handle the truth” shot by Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men against a rich Tom Cruise of elusive maze of military justice. All the work of Sorkin – true “author” through an intermediary of the films which leaves the mark – is both patient and urgent: it is to use dialogue and the words to get to the essence, the humanity of the figures that puts on the scene, signing up openly in a classical tradition of American drama. Steve Jobs is more proof of that choice to follow Sorkin for a dialogue craft and narrative in contemporary Hollywood, is increasingly figure of “Old Restelo”.

But when pounce- the figure literally larger-than-life man who made a computer company the most valuable company in today’s economy, the writer released a deluge of criticism. Sorkin has been left under attack and right for using of “artistic freedom” in the picture created of Jobs, to a degree that had not been as strong at its previous foray into technology with The Social Network , the story of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Five years ago, the “foreknowledge” of a continuous sign Zuckerberg in American business history was praised (even if the picture of the programmer was not unanimous); Today, the portrait of Jobs as insecure perfectionist is to be demolished, with the most virulent attacks to come from those who deprived with Jobs (although, for example, Steve Wozniak, the first hour programmer, defending Sorkin and the film). The fact is that Steve Jobs Sorkin and Boyle has been polled in a manner that, for example, the 2013 film Joshua Michael Stern with Kutcher was not – and, in general, those who enter the film from the side of technology, more than by the side of cinema, do not like.

Walt Mossberg, veteran technology journalist, wrote on the site The Verge that the film, for good entertainment that is, providing a poor service to Jobs’ memory. Compare Steve Jobs with the Citizen Kane : where Welles was at least the sense to “hide” his attack on tycoon William Randolph Hearst behind the fictional character Charles Foster Kane, the movie Boyle would be a travesty of Jobs he knows, by focusing on the Jobs’ refusal to affiliate Lisa, born of his relationship with Chrisann Brennan, and “trauma” has been adopted son, ignoring his marriage in 1991 with Laurene Powell . Tim Cook, Jobs’s successor as head of the company, hinted that Steve Jobs would be “opportunistic” – at least strange when spent four years between the first drafts of the script and the premiere of the film, adapted from the acclaimed official biography and authorized Walter Isaacson. (And the film is far from being a success:. Even if no one expected a blockbuster like Minimum or the new Bond, revenues are significantly below expectations)

However, many of the details that Sorkin articulates the narrative scaffolding Steve Jobs are ordered by the historical record – the site CNET.com proposed an exercise to “find the differences” – even though reorganized in the name of creative freedom for dramatic effects. In an interview with veteran technology journalist Steven Levy, a longtime observer of the Apple universe and that – he also – did not recognize in the real Jobs Movie Jobs, Sorkin explained that did not interest him, ever, make a traditional biography of the man Apple. For this, as there were many alternatives – from the book Isaacson to the recent documentary by Alex Gibney, The Man in the Machine (whose debut was completely drowned out by Boyle film cover). “A biopic would be a story from birth to death, would be much closer to a Wikipedia page dramatized,” Sorkin said Levy, noting that a narrative biography is not a news story. “This film is not The Story of Steve Jobs and was never thought of as a list of all the important facts of his life.”

The playwright uses a pertinent example in the same interview : no one looks for The Queen , Stephen Frears, as a faithful transcription to the reality of what happened within the British royal family after the tragic death of Diana of Wales, and the argument of Peter Morgan was accepted as a work of dramatic invention from real facts concentrated in a week in the life of Queen Elizabeth II. Sorkin argues then that Steve Jobs would be the equivalent of that dramatic invention, using as a starting point the real facts: the three presentation conference that divide the film into three acts (the release of the original Mac in 1984, the launch of the ill-fated NeXT in 1988, and the return to Apple with the release of the iMac in 1998), and clenched relations with Chrisann, Wozniak or the president that Jobs was “stealing” to Pepsi, John Sculley.

The question of biopic is therefore central in response to Steve Jobs. Sorkin says he repeatedly declined to a pure biopic. Richard Brody (who does not like the film) argued in the column New Yorker , that the problem may exist with Steve Jobs does not lie in the factual differences, because the tendency and temptation to any biopic is of filing the edges all for a life can fit perfectly in a dramatic drawer and pre-defined narrative, almost heroic.

The way the reaction to the film is divided so ardently, among those who knew Jobs without recognize him in the movie and those who never knew him but see the film as legitimate look like any other on the character, reveals how what Sorkin wants is not filing these edges before returning the fallible dimension, contradictory, inherent in human beings. Steve Jobs that Sorkin wrote and Michael Fassbender plays is a twin of your Mark Zuckerberg, a man far from perfect hiding behind a “reality distortion field”. Aaron Sorkin is the penetrated or just created another will be at the discretion of those who see Steve Jobs.


                     
                 
LikeTweet

No comments:

Post a Comment