Open Road FIlms
In Joshua Michael Stern’s Jobs, our first glimpse of Steve Jobs (Ashton Kutcher) is at the Apple Town Hall staff meeting in 2001, as he’s making his way towards the podium minutes before introducing the iPod. He’s walking his idiosyncratic forward-leaning walk – short steps, slightly pigeon-toed, with his head in front of his body. It’s a great opener, given that most people’s initial description of the guy associated with the personal computer is heady brainiac.
True, the movie paints broad strokes about Jobs’ life – from his college days, burgeoning tech wizardry, founding of Apple, creating the Macintosh, and everything else in between and afterwards. However, for the astrologically minded, those broad strokes – including his nitpicking tendencies, a need to control and dominate, and a profound sense of awe in face of the universe – are signatures of Jobs’ birth chart and thoughtfully depicted on screen.
Jobs’ horoscope’s main feature is a Grand Cross – planets in the tense configuration of a rectangle – in which the person is often uncomfortable trying to express all those energies. In Jobs’ case, he was emotionally (Moon in Aries) volatile and combative, artistically practical (Venus in Capricorn), idealistic about love and partnerships (Neptune in Libra), and excessively keen on being an innovative nurturer (Jupiter and Uranus in Cancer).
Completing the picture is his Sun in visionary Pisces – he had a foothold in the spiritual aspects of life, just like Albert Einstein, whose portrait regularly pops up on the screen – and also an ascendant in perfectionist Virgo which often irritatingly insists on precise, error-free outcomes. And that head-first slanted walk? Jobs has a Mercury in Aquarius – that’s the link to his futuristic, tech-friendly, eruptive, intuitive thinking – and he was always eons ahead of everyone else.
Jobs’ friends and colleagues through the years – these include Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad), Mike Markkula (Dermot Mulroney), Daniel Kottke (Lukas Haas), John Sculley (Matthew Modine) and Arthur Rock (J.K. Simmons) – make their appearances via actors who are phenomenal dead-ringers for the originals. Especially heartbreaking is the soft-spoken “Woz,” who’s only goal was to make tech fun and, when that fire is gone – at some point, he can’t even book time with his now shrewdly business-focused life-long friend – he quietly leaves the enterprise.
One of Jobs’ early employers tells him, “You’re good, but you’re an asshole. Something’s got to change.” Did it ever.
Astrology Film Rating: ♅ (Uranus)
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