There seems to be a never-ending desire to explore the powers that were when power was being invented, harnessed, and most importantly, utilized by the public at large. Last year saw The Current War, which found Benedict Cumberbatch excelling at playing Thomas Edison, Michael Shannon did his always awesome work as George Westinghouse and Nicholas Hoult portrayed Nikola Tesla. Years ago, David Bowie had the honor of portraying Tesla and now with a biopic devoted solely to the energy pioneer, Tesla, finds Ethan Hawke inhabiting the man who history seems to continually give the shaft. Sadly, cinematically, the forward thinker is still not getting his due.
Hawke is sublime as Tesla, but he can only do so much with the story Michael Almereyda penned and directed. Overall, the film takes a whole lot of risky moves—seeking to set it apart from other biopics on the subject and the movie milieu as a whole. First of all, the narrator of our tale is J.P. Morgan’s daughter Anne (Eve Hewson). Why you ask? Well, cannot answer for Almereyda… but as the auteur lays out in his motion picture, he seems to have taken the “shake things up” route more often than the traditional storytelling measures. For example, early in the film, Anne breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience and talks about Google results for both Edison and Tesla. It illustrates how history feels about these two energy titans and inversely, that is reflected in the number of Google searches and results for each man. Why is a woman from the 19th century discussing 21st-century technology? Just trying to be different, man.
With some other subject matter and different players, that might have worked. But in Tesla, it honestly feels out of left field. That’s not even the most out of nowhere play that Almereyda employs with his film. More on that in a few.
As a reviewer, a pet peeve of mine that more often than not happens. It is when filmmakers get biopics wrong. It’s not like other films in the narrative canon that can get the remake treatment, learning from the mistakes of the original for the redo. Nobody remakes biopics. Tesla has been a part of a slew of other films, but this is the first time that a filmmaker has devoted his entire moviemaking mission to tell the energy inventor’s true tale. Sadly, nothing ever happens in Tesla that provides any kind of spark, literally and figuratively.
His entire relationship with Edison is mired in mystery, where the facts on the subject have been well documented (in flicks such as The Current War for one example). Here, Kyle MacLachlan gets the honor of portraying the electric inventor. He too does everything he can to bring some sort of buzz to his scenes with Hawke and sadly, it always just comes off as quite flat. MacLachlan and Hawke form the craziest of tandems in this picture. They are fantastic together and their respect and disdain for one another is palpable, but at the same time, it never goes anywhere. The Twin Peaks star has fun with the historical figure, but he is continually undermined by the lack of any kind of richness to the script.
Hawke dives into the role with robust gusto. One can sense that he believes that this is a man worthy of his own film that gets to dive deeply into who he was as a man, and more importantly, what his contributions to our society were, and most importantly, how his contributions changed our lives for the better. Viewers will be waiting all day and night for that. Instead, we are delivered a misguided and flailing story that never firmly decides what its tone is going to be, or even what it is that Tesla seeks to accomplish. The actor is the famed inventor and gives us some clue as to why this is a guy whose name should be known for more than a line of electric cars. One day, Hawke will get an Oscar. He probably thought that might happen with this tale. Unfortunately, the stoic nature of the entire endeavor grounds it.
Sadly, the entire film is… and this is a word I hate using to describe anyone’s hard work, boring. It’s just a chore to even get through it. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that there is a Hail Mary moment in the flick that feels exactly like it is—a last-ditch effort to add something to ramp up our interest and connectivity to the story. Hawke grabs a microphone and proceeds to belt out Tears for Fears’ smash hit, Everybody Wants to Rule the World.
That’s right, Tesla does Karaoke. In hindsight, that’s probably all you need to know about this film.
Grade: C-