“TESLA” My rating: C+
102 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
The engineer and inventor Nicola Tesla (1856-1943) is one of history’s most fascinating characters…and one of the most elusive .
A scientific genius who pioneered alternating current electrical systems, he was a terrible businessman who died broke. He was also a hermit who avoided human intimacy and a lifelong virgin.
Moreover, even his biographers have found it hard to pin down the guy’s personality. The man is an engima.
When he has been portrayed on film — for instance by David Bowie in “The Prestige” (2006) and Nicholas Hoult in “The Current War” (2017) — he’s a supporting character. The guy just wasn’t leading man material.
Which meant that Overland Park-born filmmaker Michael Almereyda had his work cut out for him in filming “Tesla,” a project which he has been dabbling with for more than 20 years.
Even with the tremendously skilled Ethan Hawke in the title role (Hawke starred in Almereyda’s modern-dress version of “Hamlet” back in 2000) it must be reported that there’s a hole in the middle of “Tesla” where the lead character should be.
Almereyda anticipated this obstacle, and has attempted to compensate with an expansive filmmaking language that throws curve after curve at his audience (and which, not coincidentally, can be achieved with a modest budget).
The resulting film delivers plenty of factual information about Tesla and his work, including the acknowledgement that more than a century ago he was doing stuff with electricity that scientists today cannot yet explain (like transmitting electrical current through the earth to light up a Colorado town many miles away).
The downside is that “Tesla” often plays more like a series of tableaus than a coherent narrative.
Sometimes the film is lushly mounted and costumed in the tradition of historic biopics. At other times scenes are played out against projections of 19th-century photographs.
Hawke’s Tesla rarely talks about himself; indeed, this is a largely internalized performance. So his story is narrated by heiress Anne Morgan (Eve Hewson), the daughter of billionaire J.P. Morgan and perhaps the only woman Tesla ever befriended. Hewson (daughter of rock star Bono) sometimes performs opposite Hawke, but is also seen (still costumed in her Victorian-era frills) sitting at a modern laptop computer where she does Google searches on her subject.
Later on Tesla entertains the great actress Sarah Bernhardt (Rebecca Dayan); both are weirdly charismatic yet utterly impenetrable.
Given Tesla’s ever-in-retreat personality, it’s not surprising that the film is nearly stolen by Kyle MacLachan as Thomas Edison, Tesla’s one-time employer and lifelong rival in the quest to electrify America. MacLachlan is wonderfully pompous as the Wizard of Menlo Park, and even though he is essentially playing the film’s heavy, he’s charming in a gruff, no-nonsense way.
As our narrator Hewson is perfectly adequate. Keep an eye out for Jim Gaffigan as George Westinghouse, Tesla’s biggest backer, and the late Lois Smith (a Topeka girl) in one of her last film appearances as a society grand dame entertained by Tesla’s electrical sleight of hand.
| Robert W. Butler
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