Butler's Cinema Scene

Ethan Hawke as Nicola Tesla

“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.

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Wreckage of U.S. aircraft in wake of failed Iran hostage rescue

“DESERT ONE” My rating: B

107 minutes | No MPAA rating

A demoralizing bit of recent American history comes vividly to life in “Desert One,”  Oscar-winner Barbara Kopple’s richly detailed retelling of this country’s failed attempt in 1979 to rescue our citizens being held hostage by the new revolutionary Irani regime.

To say that Kopple has cast a wide net in researching this story is an understatement. Giving first-person testimony are not only Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale (then the U.S. president and vice-president) and members of the commando team that undertook the mission, but also Iranis who guarded the American prisoners, the hostages themselves, surviving family members of the men who died in the effort, and journalists like Ted Koppel who covered the event.

The actual raid doesn’t begin until nearly 40 minutes into the documentary. Kopple wisely spends much time explaining (or rather, having others explain…there’s no narration) the tortuous history of U.S.-Iran relations, our propping up of the dictatorial rule of the Shah of Iran and his long reign of terror waged against his country’s dissidents.

The revolt by Islamic fundamentalists is harrowingly recreated through vintage news footage and the testimony of the then-young Marine guarding the gate of the U.S. Embassy when the hordes descended upon it.

The life of the hostages is described in sometimes uncomfortable detail.  One American recalls having his hands cuffed in front of him for weeks at a time, which meant that after defecating he could not clean himself. And despite Irani claims that the prisoners were being treated humanely, there’s that notorious midnight episode in which prisoners were stripped to their underwear and led to a yard where they faced a mock firing squad. (Throughout the doc, Kopple employs animated sequences to depict scenes for which there is no archival footage.)

The hostage crisis stymied President Jimmy Carter, who was rebuffed in his efforts to negotiate with the Irani.  He reluctantly gave the OK to plan a rescue.  Specially skilled fighters from all areas of the military were chosen to train for the raid. Some may have been gung ho about the whole business; one fighter now says he never thought they could pull it off: “Too many moving parts.”

Indeed, this was a hugely ambitious and somewhat improbable effort.  A half dozen helicopters from American warships would fly into the Irani desert at night to meet two transport planes filled with fighters. They would then drive to Tehran, attack the prison, blow a hole in the wall to allow the hostages to escape, then regroup in a nearby sports stadium where U.S. ‘copters would lift them out.

Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.  Two choppers ran into a desert dust storm and returned to their ship.  The landing site was close to a rarely traveled road which — wouldn’t you know it? — was uncharacteristically busy that night.  The Americans soon found themselves babysitting (at gunpoint) a bus chartered by an extended Irani family (great testimony from a passenger who was only a child at the time).

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