Life without smartphones has become almost impossible to imagine today. As much as they have simplified and accelerated our lives, they have also made us dependent on them, and the biographical dramedy of the young Canadian filmmaker Matt Johnson brings us a surprisingly good story about the phone that people had before they bought an iPhone. As the title of the film says, it is about the almost forgotten BlackBerry, the first (semi)smartphone that has since completely disappeared from the market, and it is an exciting, dynamic and intelligent combination of drama and comedy.
Stylistically, it was shot on the model of series like “Succession” or “The Office”, almost in a documentary style with a hand-held camera with sharp, fast movements and short cuts. Almost on the trail of films like those made by Steven Soderbergh, while “BlackBerry” continues thematically and spiritually to recent films about great greed, an incredible rise and a precipitous fall, such as “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Wall Street” itself. The story begins in 1996 in the Canadian city of Waterloo, where the CEO of the technology company RIM, Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and his best friend and co-founder of the company Doug Fregin (director and co-writer Matt Johnson) are trying to sell their invention to a more powerful company.
Fate will play out so that businessman Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), whose company they tried to sell his phone, which is also a computer, will be fired. This classic Gordongekkian financier will realize the potential of their invention and will join their company as co-CEO only to realize that it is a company that is on the verge of bankruptcy. That’s not surprising, because both Mike and Doug, and especially the rest of the employees, are typical, childish geeks, weirdos who don’t bother too much with the fact that their company is failing, but the most important thing for them is to have a good time and that in their typical geeky way .
And while Mike and Doug are clearly technological geniuses, aware that they have created a revolutionary product that has the potential to change the world, they are people who simply do not have the skills to sell their product. When Jim comes along, that will change and practically overnight their company will become a tech giant and they will become multi-billionaires. As we know, it won’t be long-lived, and in addition to following the beginnings of their journey and how Blackberry was created, it is wise to skip the time in between and then follow how it all ended. The key moment here will happen with Steve Jobs’ famous presentation about the first edition of the iPhone, which will soon send a phone with a huge keyboard to the dustbin of history, and the touch-screen will become the prevailing technology.
The zeitgeist at the turn of the nineties into the 2000s, when the digital revolution was in its infancy and when many such computer geeks got rich overnight and moved from their mom’s garages to villas, is brilliantly captured here. It was filmed in a satirical style, almost like a comedy that we laugh at only to realize a split second later that none of it is funny, but scary and sick, just like in “The Wolf of Wall Street”. “BlackBerry” had its premiere in the main program of the festival in Berlin, and although practically all the characters are typical charismatic sociopaths like Jim or naive, playful immature guys like Doug (Mike is somewhere in the middle), it is a film that perfectly shows which the system works like a high-tech system that rewards the most greedy, immoral and cruel. Until one moment.