MIFF 2023 Film Review - Blackberry
Images courtesy of Common State.
2023 has seen the sudden rise of a new film subgenre coined the “Product Biopic” among the likes of Tetris, Air, and Flamin’ Hot to name a few. Chief amongst these is BlackBerry, the new film by Nirvanna The Band The Show creator, Matt Johnson, chronicling the glorious rise and humiliating fall of the Canadian company responsible for the revolutionary invention of the first smartphone, successfully combining the mobile phone and portable computer.
The film is rightfully less interested in the product, nor its history, and more so in the people who created it, and their tumultuous relationships as they climb the corporate ladder from the depths of obscurity. The neurotic inventor Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel), and his nerdy best friend Doug Fregin (Johnson himself) are co-founders of R.I.M (Research In Motion), who are approached by the resilient but controlling Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton) to help sell their smartphone creation to millions of consumers.
The casting is brilliant: the makeup and costumes transform Baruchel and Howerton into the real men they portray so seamlessly, while Matt Johnson pretty much plays himself with glasses, which feels so natural as he evolves from dorky side character to the eventual straight-man audience surrogate when everything starts going crazy. Great performances come from all of the three leads, but especially forceful work comes from Howerton, who genuinely deserves heaps of award nods for his delivery of “I AM FROM WATERLOO! WHERE THE VAMPIRES HANG OUT!”. Playing alongside them is an ensemble of Michael Ironside as the no-nonsense Charles Purdy, Cary Elwes as opposing Palm CEO Carl Yankowski, and Google and Motorola engineers coaxed into working for BlackBerry, played by Rich Sommer and SungWon Cho respectively.
Unlike a lot of other biographical films, BlackBerry is very smartly structured around three specific time periods instead of attempting to be an exhausting list of every significant event in the history of BlackBerry. The story begins in 1996 when Lazaridis meets Fregin and creates the titular smartphone and successfully sells it to Verizon. It then moves on to 2003 when the CEO of Palm tries to buy out BlackBerry, forcing Lazaridis and Balsillie frantically try to increase their product capacity. Finally it ends in 2007, when the invention of the iPhone throws a wrench into BlackBerry’s perfect machine, and all of the distressing legal issues that come back to bite the co-founders right where it hurts the most, their wallets. There are definite comparisons to be made with another tech billionaire biopic, David Fincher’s The Social Network, yet this much more humorous interpretation uses the innate tension between its central characters for comedic purposes.
It was a very smart move making this a comedy, since the audience knows what happens to the smartphone industry, especially upon the introduction of the Apple iPhone, and this film thrives in that dramatic irony. Unlike most biopics that try to hide that knowledge, BlackBerry employs it, to comedic effect, with perfectly placed moments of foreshadowing that border on directly winking to the audience.
Shot in a voyeuristic handheld style, almost constantly zoomed in with a telephoto lens, Blackberry perpetuates a sense of realism that works in tandem with the naturally comedic performances. Continuing the stylistic trend of Johnson’s previous work, especially his sci-fi mockumentary Operation Avalanche, at times BlackBerry feels like a documentary, which suits the true story it’s based on very well.
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Blackberry screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival, running in metro cinemas August 3-20 and online August 18-27.
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