Bloggers,
internet critics and also people who actually know what they’re talking about
often cite Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane
(1941) as the greatest film ever made.
Critics, amateur or otherwise, often seem a bit stuck in their ways and
nobody has ever been bold enough to suggest that the world, in the ensuing 76
years, has created anything to take its mantle.
Let’s look at a few examples: 2001?
Nah: they never take sci-fi seriously. The Lives Of Others? Nah: they’d never
give the title to a foreign-language film. Annie
Hall? Nah: they’d never take comedy seriously (really, Adam? Really?). Avengers
Assemble? Well…
Personally, I
think there are a few films that I would seriously consider bumping ahead of it
on the list: The Godfather (1 or 2), Casablanca, It’s A Wonderful Life, Singin’
In The Rain, 2001, Sunset Boulevard.
The best film ever should be entertaining as well as well made, and in
the words of Family Guy, “I just saved
you two long, boobless hours” by telling you that Kane’s Rosebud is the name of his childhood sled. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not looking for a
favourite film here (The Graduate,
thanks for asking, although I do have a Top 5), but one that would be seriously
considered the best. This raises the
question of criteria: what makes Citizen
Kane the best, and what are we looking for in a contender?
Kane is often lauded, and rightly so,
for the following: visual style (use of deep focus, Welles’ command of
framing); narrative structure (told out of sequence, largely in flashback, and
from multiple perspectives, which may not be entirely reliable); a towering
central performance from Welles, unofficially playing newspaper tycoon William
Randolph Hearst as a narcissistic tyrant; themes of the corrupting,
dehumanizing influence of power and money, and a portrait of a man with immense
cultural influence.
Perhaps we
haven’t lauded another best film of all time because it was made in a more
innocent time; Kane did technical
things with film form and narrative structure that had not been done before so
it perhaps gets extra points for originality?
Maybe we just haven’t had a film worthy of the title since.
Well I have
a contender, if not a title challenger.
Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs
biopic is unlikely to be remembered as a ‘best film of all time’ but for me, it
ticks all the boxes Kane receives so
much credit for inventing.
A visual box
of tricks since Shallow Grave, Boyle
pulls rabbit out of rabbit out of his virtuoso hat (or should that be ipods out
of a roll neck jumper?) to make kinetic and fresh a story that is still in the
public consciousness. Apple’s hits and
misses are projected along corridors as characters walk along them; leads
Fassbender, Winslet and Catherine Waterston are shot in seemingly impossible
reflections in dressing room mirrors as Boyle’s camera dances around them; his
shot choices are brilliant, making one-room scenes of people arguing utterly
thrilling in a way not seen since 12
Angry Men. Best of all, though, is a
sombre boardroom scene; under lit, with the downpour outside projected in the
unlikeliest of places within, it’s a masterful piece of pathetic fallacy.
You’ve all
seen biopics, right? They follow a pretty standard format, right? We first see
famous person on the eve of a big event, reflecting on their past. We’re then taken back to see their childhood,
fledgling talent, early success, and then the fame years when it all goes to
their heads and they alienate their loved ones in a haze of ego and addiction, before
final redemption. It ends with said big
event showing that they’ve still got it!
Seen that film once or twice? Steve Jobs eschews such formula in favour of staging the entire film
backstage at three product launches, spanning 14 years. We see Jobs at various stages of success and
relative failure, and his story is told via his relationships to Apple
programmer Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen) and CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), as
well as his sisterly marketing exec Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet). This allows Boyle to put a huge amount of
faith in his audience to follow what’s been happening in the interim and be
playful with exposition, and play on Jobs’ incalculable self-belief in the face
of good and bad times.
Best of all,
though, is that Jobs’ story is grounded by his relationship to ex-partner
Chrisann Brennan (Waterston) and the little girl that Jobs denies is their
child. This gives what culd be a very
dull story about a computer company a very human and emotional core, and the
moments where Jobs opens up to her, breaking his aloof veneer to become a real
person for a little while, are truly special.
A biopic, then, that is unconcerned with a start, middle, and end, and
while chronological, certainly unconventional.
Written by the
peerless Aaron Sorkin, Steve Jobs is
relentlessly paced, with quips and put downs to rival His Girl Friday in its acerbic wit: when challenged on what Jobs
actually did for Apple, his priceless response was that he “plays the orchestra”. Fassbender’s performance as Jobs is not the
showy fare that wins Oscars, but has the relentless energy one would expect
from a man whose cultural legacy, for better or worse, has changed the world. While neither a character assassination nor a
puff piece, Jobs himself does not come off as a nice man – in his own words, “poorly
made” - rather a borderline-Autistic, single-minded man who upsets those who
care about him in pursuit of a goal. Few
actors could bring and sustain such energy while still delivering the emotional
beats. As Welles was unafraid to show his
Kane as both young idealist and embittered old tyrant, Fassbender plays Jobs at
his worst, and as human as he could be.
Steve Jobs even has its own ‘Rosebud’
moment, which is wonderfully underplayed by Boyle. In a final emotional reveal from Jobs, we
find out that he in fact kept and cherished the drawing his daughter did on a prototype
Macintosh, despite denying his paternity all along. Furthermore, the drawing bears a striking resemblance
to the design of Jobs’ piece de resistance,
the iMac. We find out, as his daughter
does, that he has cared all along.
I doubt for
one second that Steve Jobs will ever
come up in a conversation about the best film ever made, but when that
discussion comes up, even if it’s blogged using a Mac (this wasn’t, by the
way), please remember that Danny Boyle’s films does everything Kane does, and better in some
places. So does Kane get extra points for getting there first? Has Boyle, and
everyone else since Orson Welles, simply set their camera running on the shoulders
of giants? I’m going to have a listen to
my iPod while I decide.
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