BEFORE: OK, Easter's over, I got a bunch of animated features out of my way, tipped my cap to the start of baseball season - what's next? Well, Mother's Day, which is about 12 days away, by my count. Time enough to buy a greeting card AND get it in the mail, but movie-wise, I'm back in random-ville. Any and all subject matter, whatever gets me to the three linked films I've earmarked as being relevant to Mother's Day. There are thousands of films about mothers, but three stood out, because they already were on my list and they all link together, so it just feels right - I'll just be a little all-over-the-place thematically until I get there.
Ethan Hawke carries over from "The Phenom".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Current War: Director's Cut" (Movie #3,841)
THE PLOT: A freewheeling take on visionary inventor Nikola Tesla, his interactions with Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan's daughter Anne, and his breakthroughs in transmitting electrical power and light.
AFTER: I tried to get to this film last year, since it's pretty much got the same plot as "The Current War", which was finished three years before in 2017, but got shelved because of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, and wasn't released until 2019. By then, the "Tesla" film was probably in production at another studio, and it was too late for either studio to scrap their plans, so once again, we've got duplicate films covering the same ground. Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, J.P. Morgan - it's the same set of late-1800's characters, and that's why I was hoping to watch the two films a bit closer together, because, well, who played Edison better, Benedict Cumberbatch or Kyle MacLachlan? Who made the better Tesla, Nicholas Hoult or Ethan Hawke? For George Westinghouse, it's a choice between Michael Shannon or Jim Gaffigan, as odd as that sounds. Maybe it's a wash, and you just have to go with the set of actors that you personally prefer. Cumberbatch is great, but Kyle MacLachlan brings a bit of that Dale Cooper optimism and cluelessness, if you know what I mean. Michael Shannon - whoof, he can't help but come off as gruff and unapproachable, because that's what he does - and Jim Gaffigan? Sure, gruff also, but he can't help but seem a bit goofy and overblown, so take your pick.
Ah, but Tesla, that's a challence. Nicholas Hoult was a bit too young and naive, perhaps? Ethan Hawke is older and almost seems to disappear into this character, leaving him as a bit of an enigma, and maybe that's the way he should be? Tesla was not born American, he was Serbian, so there was the language barrier, plus like Edison he was a certified genius, so here Hawke plays him as the distant type, always lost in thought, perhaps. In the end, who are we to say which portrayal is more accurate, and this is the problem with most historical fiction films, the filmmakers really have to read between the lines if they're setting out to create an accurate portrayal of people from the past. How do you take a list of a man's inventions and accomplishments and extrapolate from that, when you hire an actor to then dress like that man, talk like that man, and even think like that man? It's a hit or miss proposition, right?
Well, not exactly, because of the two films, only one of them felt like it was striving for any kind of accuracy - "Tesla", perhaps realizing the shortcomings of the format, put actions and dialogue on film, then added scenes where one character breaks the fourth wall to say, "Wait, it probably didn't happen like that..." which seems at first like the film is undercutting its own premise. Well, if that's not how it happened, why not show us how it happened? Perhaps nobody knows. Did Edison and Tesla have a conversation at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, in which Edison admitted he was wrong about alternating current? No, probably not. Did Tesla smack Edison with an ice cream cone, just to prove that he did have a sense of humor? Eh, probably not, and Edison probably wouldn't have admitted that, either, even if Tesla did that and it WAS funny. (Hitting somebody in the face with a cream pie is funny, unless you're the one getting hit in the face...)
And I'm fairly sure that Nikola Tesla, who died in 1937, never sang the song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears, which wasn't written until the 1980's. So, umm, why do we see Hawke, as Tesla, do this at the end of the film? Well, it's probably a bit more enjoyable than watching Tesla die alone in Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel, especially since his body wasn't found for two days, thanks to a "Do Not Disturb" sign - who knew that some hotel maids actually pay attention to those? Tesla had been struck by a NYC taxicab several days before, broke three ribs but refused to see a doctor.
Either way, this film didn't really set out to be "historically accurate" - J.P. Morgan's daughter also addresses the audience at times and mentions how many hits Google produces for a search on Tesla, compared with the numbers for Edison. But Anne Morgan must have died in the 1930's herself, so she'd never have known what Google is. Some of this film is like that thought experiment where students have an imaginary conversation with a historical figure, and try to explain our present world to them. Tesla was a lifelong bachelor, which is sometimes code for gay, but another theory is that he held women in high regard, as superior, and thought he wasn't worthy enough for one. But he also held the opinion that in trying to gain equality with men, women were losing their femininity, and he was disappointed in that. Well, if he said that aloud, then I can probably guess why he never married. But that means that the relationship depicted here between him and Anne Morgan is probably an invented piece of history for this film.
The debate between A.C. and D.C. power, the battles between Westinghouse/Tesla and Edison's companies over supplying electricity to various cities, the arguments over the best way to use electricity to kill animals or execute criminals - I've seen all this already, in "The Current War". If you have, too, then there's almost no need to re-hash it all with "Tesla". Ah, but then there are the later years, that's when things started to get interesting again for me. Tesla wasn't seen much in the later part of "The Current War", and instead the film focused on Edison and Westinghouse meeting at the Columbian Exposition. So, umm, what happened to Tesla?
After the success in Chicago, and another success using Niagara Falls to supply power, Tesla started his own company, to market his previous patents and inventions and come up with new ones - but the Fifth Avenue building caught fire early on, destroying his notes and many of his models. He moved his lab to East Houston Street, and started to experiment with X-ray imaging, radio control, wireless power, you know, future stuff. But then I guess he went a little crazy, because he decided that the best idea was to transmit electricity, long-distance, using the Earth itself. You know, the thing we walk on? He moved his lab from New York City to Colorado Springs, to take advantage of a higher altitude to electrically synch up the Earth and the sky, so he could send signals from Colorado to Paris. But they already had the telegraph by then, didn't they?
Tesla dusted off the old Tesla coils, built a huge tower on Long Island and claimed that he was receiving communications from another planet, probably Mars. Some people believe, though, that he was just picking up echoes of Marconi's early experiments with radio. Tesla asked J.P. Morgan for more money so he could get ahead of Marconi on the wireless radio thing - say, you don't suppose that Tesla just lived to be competitive, do you? First Edison, then Marconi? Always the bridesmaid, Nikola, never the bride...except Tesla DID beat Edison, it was A/C over D/C, he just didn't know how to quit when he was ahead, I guess. So Marconi beat Tesla with the whole radio thing, and Tesla had to close down his Long Island lab and mortgage his property to cover his debts at the Waldorf-Astoria. Geez, for a genius inventor he was pretty stupid with his money, for the same cost of living in a Manhattan hotel for five years, he could have bought a pretty nice house out on Long Island outright, then he'd have a place to live when another inventor was faster on the draw.
The "Tesla" movie doesn't really make all this clear - again, it has Tesla singing a Tears for Fears song at the end - I'm mixing in a bunch of historical facts from Wikipedia just in case you're curious about the REAL story. Tesla spent the 1910's and half of the 1920's slowly going bankrupt - he could have quit the game at any time, moved out of NYC and got a sweet college teaching gig somewhere, only he didn't do that. He moved to a new hotel every few years and always left a giant bill behind. Then he just became another NYC weirdo, feeding and caring for the pigeons, that's the sad truth. He always claimed to be working on some new form of energy or even a "death ray", but none of it was for real.
And now, of course, there's the Tesla electric cars named after him. Maybe the Current War between those inventors back in the 1800's might remind you of the space race between Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson, at least on some level. No matter the decade, rich people and inventors are a bit crazy. J.P. Morgan wasted a bunch of his money on collecting famous paintings, and though his hair was fine, better than Musk's, anyway, he apparently had a very bad skin condition on his nose. Or is that another thing this "Tesla" film made up?
Also starring Kyle MacLachlan (last seen in "Capone"), Eve Hewson (last seen in "Papillon" (2017)), Jim Gaffigan (last heard in "Luca"), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (last seen in "Mona Lisa Smile"), Hannah Gross (last seen in "Joker"), Josh Hamilton (last seen in "Frances Ha"), James Urbaniak (last seen in "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde"), Rebecca Dayan (last seen in "Celeste & Jesse Forever"), Donnie Keshawarz (last seen in "Ad Astra"), Lucy Walters, Blake DeLong (last seen in "Late Night"), Lois Smith (last seen in "The French Dispatch"), Ian Lithgow, Dan Bittner (last seen in "Brittany Runs a Marathon"), David Kallaway (last seen in "For a Good Time, Call..."), Karl Geary, Haley Elise Pehrson, Tony Hutaj, Corban Elwick-Schermitz, Emory Gleeson, Michael Mastro, Emma O'Connor, Steven Gurewitz, Rick Zahn (last seen in "Chuck"), John Palladino, Tom Farrell, David Weinberg, Joshuah Melnick, Peter Greene (last seen in "The Bounty Hunter").
RATING: 4 out of 10 painted backdrops (umm, we have green screens now...)
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