Original Sin

STEVE JOBS: THE MAN IN THE MACHINE (B+) - What an asshole.

That was the phrase that popped into my head, even before the woman behind me in the theater whispered it to her date.

The prolific Alex Gibney ("Going Clear," "We Steal Secrets," "The Armstrong Lie") takes us on a dark yet enlightening journey into the biography of Steve Jobs, the co-founder (and returning savior) of Apple. Starting with the Lennon-like global mourning of the man in 2011, Gibney savors the aura and then spends nearly three-quarters of his two-hour documentary building up the man, the myth and the legend. But you know the hammer will eventually fall on those sneakered feet of clay.

Jobs was apparently quite the jerk. He cheated Steve Wozniak out of a few thousand dollars on an early project of theirs. He denied paternity of his daughter. He drove his employees to the brink of destroying their personal lives. He co-opted the images of Gandhi and Einstein in order to sell gadgets.

But he was handsome and charming and talented. He was a visionary. He was driven to not only thrive in business but also change the culture. He succeeded in both.

Gibney grinds through Jobs' narrative chronologically, in workmanlike fashion. There's nothing extraordinary about the storytelling. We hear from Wozniak, as well as from the ex-wife and from other colleagues along the way. There is fascinating file footage from the heady days of the '70s when the pioneer spirit took hold in what was to become known as Silicon Valley. We see the iconic "1984" Super Bowl ad. There is the fall and rise, the ousting and the triumphant return, leading to the marketing genius of the annual unveiling (the iPod! the iPhone!) and the resulting hyperventilating by the press and the fanboys.

And that's when Gibney finally connects some dots and -- like the media always does and like the public enjoys -- tears down the man he built up. There is an edge to the slice and dice of a flawed man, a bit of anger seeping through.

By the end, though, we're not just left with a pair of warring images of Steve Jobs. Gibney is going from something a little deeper. He's reflecting our behavior back to us. He's using Jobs as a sort-of x-ray of society. It's as if Jobs were a victim of our collective excesses, a guy who just knew how to tap into the zeitgeist, exploit it -- and then, like a guru, convey it to us with a Zen-like air of inevitability. He guided us into a brave new world; it's our own fault if we saw him as a god.

He might have been a gentle genius of his age. But -- no surprise -- he was kind of a dick, too.