Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine

Why did so many people who didn’t know Steve Jobs personally cry when he died? Oscar winner Alex Gibney offers a well-considered answer to this question in this fascinating portrait of Steve Jobs, which invites you to “think different” about the achievements and complex persona of Apple’s legendary co-founder. Gibney unearths the contradictions between Jobs’s public image and private character, and uses them to illuminate a critical analysis of the influence of his products on the relationship between humans and machines. He goes on to account for the depth of love people feel for the creator of the iMac and the iPhone. Gibney leads the search in voice-over, loosely following the chronology of Jobs’s successful career, and pausing to reflect on the sacrifices that had to be made along the way. To make his case, the director interweaves archive footage and eye-opening email quotes with interviews with co-founder Steve Wozniak, marketing specialist Regis McKenna, Jobs’s spiritual guru Kobun Chino Otogawa, his former girlfriend Chrisann Brennan, journalists and former employees. We learn about the man behind the myth, and discover the extent to which Jobs’s “core values” survived his transformation from a charismatic rebel into a powerful figure who created his own reality.