Execrable.  Anita Hill as Jesus Christ, Clarence Thomas as Impenetrable Sphinx, the story so stacked in her favor it’s a liberal wet dream. Then, there is this laughable coda where the hard charging female Kennedy aide says to the more judicious female Biden aide, “who’d you believe, him or her?” like any response other than “her” was possible given the hagiography that preceded the exchange.

Not only is the mythology laughable (apparently, Anita Hill will be replacing someone on currency sooner than we think), but the presentation is lackluster and vanilla.  It’s not Kerry Washington’s fault that Hill is so dull.  She’s written as nothing more than a platitudinous victim, and her emotional response to any given development is a self-pitying, dew-eyed disappointment in how mankind has failed her.  Wendell Pierce’s Thomas is no better, occasionally rising above catatonic, always in the corner, ruminating, obsessing, zzzzzzzzzzz.  The Democrats are hands-tied, decent truth-seekers, the Republicans hysterical street brawlers, not a scene surprising or enlightening.

It’s a shame.  The story of Hill and Thomas is, in the seams, the story of two people who worked together, she relied on him for advancement, but clearly developed a grudge at some point.  He said some Long Dong Silver shit to her, and then she, for whatever reason, took her shot at him on the eve of his confirmation, with the naively hopeful guarantee of anonymity.

And then wham!  She’s outed (a mere anonymous statement will not stop the Hope from Pinpoint, Georgia) and the process takes them both to places they never imagined they’d be, where he must play a hard race card against a cheap smear, and she must feign dramatic victimhood.  Their champions bloody and bruise the protagonists.

She tried a back alley stilleto and it wasn’t enough. He replied with a daylight, streetfront 2×4 and overcame.  They both became emblems of something larger, which, given the picayune roots of their antagonism, is the essence of the tragicomic.

Could have been a great movie.

It says a lot that director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin can hold your attention to a picture consisting solely of conversation. Yes, Sorkin and David Fincher did the same thing in The Social Network, but there, the characters were developing before your very eyes, and things were happening – a revolutionary product was being developed, friendships and rivalries were being established, complaints were being lodged, people were being screwed, and litigation was ongoing. Here, we meet Steve Jobs pretty much fully formed, at the peak of his first rise, as he launches the product that will result in his first fall, and he has already established the defining templates and themes for most of his relationships. He converses with his early collaborator and colleague (a surprisingly forceful Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak), another colleague (Michael Stuhlbarg), his loyal lieutenant (Kate Winslet) his ex-girlfriend and mother of his child (Katherine Waterston), his CEO (Jeff Daniels) and his daughter (various actresses). With the exception of a few short flashbacks, we repeat these conversations at different points in Jobs’ life, and while the effect is pronounced with regard to the relationship between Jobs and his daughter, the rest is pretty much the same conversation (certainly, with Wozniak, Waterston and Winslet), and it takes all of the gifts Boyle and Sorkin can muster to maintain interest. That’s said, mine was maintained, and as Jobs, a man so driven and disconnected that he can freely renounce his paternity of a little girl to her face, Fassbender is in total control. There is a wonderfully written scene with Jobs and longtime friend and co-worker Stuhlbarg that demonstrates the wit of Sorkin while exhibiting the unique remove and iciness of Jobs. Jobs says “I don’t want people to dislike me. I’m indifferent to whether they dislike me”, Stuhlbarg tells Jobs he’s always disliked him, and Jobs responds “Really? I’ve always liked you a lot. That’s too bad.”

As with The Social Network, Sorkin has also shorn his dialogue of the cutesy, easy patter that often plagues his work (I counted one Sorkinism – where Fassbender smarmily asks Winslet why they haven’t slept together – and that was it). The film clicks and moves, but it does not pause to celebrate its own cleverness. Still, there is not a lot of meat on this bone.  I didn’t learn a great deal more about Jobs from conversation to conversation, nor was I made privy to his genius, unless that genius is solely derived from drive and calculation.