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Yesterday we saw the movie Blackberry. My companion really liked it. I thought it was well worth seeing, but would add a few caveats. First and foremost, it's a fictionalization and dramatization, NOT a documentary.
As an artistic work, I think it works quite well. After all, film is a highly visual medium, an aural/oral medium and certainly when its primary purpose is entertainment, it tends to be a rather passive art form that affects us at an emotional and even subliminal level. As far as broad brush strokes went, I thought it did a good job of portraying high-tech corporate culture: the volatility of the sector, the long hours and burnout, the misogyny, the detrimental effects it can have on family life. It emphasized that in order to succeed, a company needs practicality as well as pie-in-the-sky creativity and innovativeness. It needs good tech people, good financial people, good legal advice. It needs to be a good place to work, have a clear set of values that its employees truly believe in and can freely speak out and be heard if they see things that make them uncomfortable. It must, above all, be ethical. And even if it meets all these stringent requirements, there's still, unfortunately, a strong element of luck involved: having the right idea and the right product at the right time.
The film also, I thought, did quite a good job of reflecting the overall culture and tenor of the times between 1996 and 2008: the street scenes, the fashions, the music, the surrounding mindset at a time when the Internet was just starting to become part of ordinary people's everyday reality.
Here's what I didn't like so much. First, the central figures - Jim Balsillie, Mike Lazaridas and Doug Fregen - felt like caricatures rather than real, relatable people. Jim was portrayed as the ruthless, cut-throat investor and CEO who insisted everything be done my way or the highway. Doug was the hippie idealist, who admired Mike and encouraged him (at least initially) and was willing to give credit where credit was due and push for balance in terms of recreation (like movie nights) and family time. Mike came across as a solid techie who nonetheless saw the value of compromise to bring all the necessary players on board. And there was virtually nothing about the perspectives of the vast armies of employees who were not present in the boardrooms and executive suites.
Here's what longtime Blackberry senior leader Dennis Kavelman wrote in a recent opinion piece:
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/dennis-kavelman-i-was-a-longtime-senior-leader-at-blackberry-the-new-movie-is-not-our-story
And here's a rather more positive review from a Toronto Star reporter and longtime fan of the Blackberry device itself:
https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/review/2023/05/11/in-blackberry-
matt-johnson-finds-gold-in-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-best-phone-in-the-world.html
And then, there's that F-word. Has any human or bot counted the number of times the word "fuck" occurs in the film? My guess is it would rival the figure in the Cadbury Count the Cows contest of some 60 years ago (which, as I recall, was 4423). Needless to say, the word was probably not used at all in its literal sense, as no one in the film had time for a sex life, whether good or bad!
I did like the musical soundtrack to the movie, particularly the song "Waterloo Sunset" by the Kinks, near the end. I mean, they could have had some cheesy remark about meeting their Waterloo. Or alternately, something reflecting when Peter Rabbit was served chamomile tea for his indigestion and sent straight to bed, while Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail feasted on a supper of bread and milk... and blackberries!
There was the obligatory "what happened next" selection of factoids (or perhaps alternate factoids) flashed up on the screen at the end of the film. One of them claimed that Blackberry in its heyday controlled 45% of the cell phone market, compared to 0% today. As the movie ended, I reached into my purse for my cell phone and turned it on to see what time it was. What type of cell phone do I own, you ask? A Blackberry.
So anyway. I still plan to read the book Losing the Signal, which even Dennis Kavelman conceded was a reasonable overview of how events actually unfolded at Blackberry. I'm on a wait-list for it at Ottawa Public Library (no. 19 on 3 copies, last I checked, with more copies on order). I may do a follow-up post once I've done that.
As an artistic work, I think it works quite well. After all, film is a highly visual medium, an aural/oral medium and certainly when its primary purpose is entertainment, it tends to be a rather passive art form that affects us at an emotional and even subliminal level. As far as broad brush strokes went, I thought it did a good job of portraying high-tech corporate culture: the volatility of the sector, the long hours and burnout, the misogyny, the detrimental effects it can have on family life. It emphasized that in order to succeed, a company needs practicality as well as pie-in-the-sky creativity and innovativeness. It needs good tech people, good financial people, good legal advice. It needs to be a good place to work, have a clear set of values that its employees truly believe in and can freely speak out and be heard if they see things that make them uncomfortable. It must, above all, be ethical. And even if it meets all these stringent requirements, there's still, unfortunately, a strong element of luck involved: having the right idea and the right product at the right time.
The film also, I thought, did quite a good job of reflecting the overall culture and tenor of the times between 1996 and 2008: the street scenes, the fashions, the music, the surrounding mindset at a time when the Internet was just starting to become part of ordinary people's everyday reality.
Here's what I didn't like so much. First, the central figures - Jim Balsillie, Mike Lazaridas and Doug Fregen - felt like caricatures rather than real, relatable people. Jim was portrayed as the ruthless, cut-throat investor and CEO who insisted everything be done my way or the highway. Doug was the hippie idealist, who admired Mike and encouraged him (at least initially) and was willing to give credit where credit was due and push for balance in terms of recreation (like movie nights) and family time. Mike came across as a solid techie who nonetheless saw the value of compromise to bring all the necessary players on board. And there was virtually nothing about the perspectives of the vast armies of employees who were not present in the boardrooms and executive suites.
Here's what longtime Blackberry senior leader Dennis Kavelman wrote in a recent opinion piece:
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/dennis-kavelman-i-was-a-longtime-senior-leader-at-blackberry-the-new-movie-is-not-our-story
And here's a rather more positive review from a Toronto Star reporter and longtime fan of the Blackberry device itself:
https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/review/2023/05/11/in-blackberry-
matt-johnson-finds-gold-in-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-best-phone-in-the-world.html
And then, there's that F-word. Has any human or bot counted the number of times the word "fuck" occurs in the film? My guess is it would rival the figure in the Cadbury Count the Cows contest of some 60 years ago (which, as I recall, was 4423). Needless to say, the word was probably not used at all in its literal sense, as no one in the film had time for a sex life, whether good or bad!
I did like the musical soundtrack to the movie, particularly the song "Waterloo Sunset" by the Kinks, near the end. I mean, they could have had some cheesy remark about meeting their Waterloo. Or alternately, something reflecting when Peter Rabbit was served chamomile tea for his indigestion and sent straight to bed, while Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail feasted on a supper of bread and milk... and blackberries!
There was the obligatory "what happened next" selection of factoids (or perhaps alternate factoids) flashed up on the screen at the end of the film. One of them claimed that Blackberry in its heyday controlled 45% of the cell phone market, compared to 0% today. As the movie ended, I reached into my purse for my cell phone and turned it on to see what time it was. What type of cell phone do I own, you ask? A Blackberry.
So anyway. I still plan to read the book Losing the Signal, which even Dennis Kavelman conceded was a reasonable overview of how events actually unfolded at Blackberry. I'm on a wait-list for it at Ottawa Public Library (no. 19 on 3 copies, last I checked, with more copies on order). I may do a follow-up post once I've done that.
