When it comes to dramatising historical events, there is
always the fear that said history on its own could end up being more
interesting than a given attempt to tell it. This film, however, may be a rare
case of that in duplicate, as the story behind the production not only has a
chance of overshadowing the production itself, for the last few years, it
actually did. This film has been stuck in release limbo since November
2017, being shelved because of the involvement of Harvey Weinstein in the
production and initial distribution deal. That’s the heavily simplified version
of the story, because every facet of the thing could easily take up this whole
article on their own, but it ultimately leads to a single question: Was this
film worth holding onto for this long?
Well, on the surface, that question seems simple, given the
real-life story’s place in the larger scope of human history, and film history
in particular. If it weren’t for the efforts and ingenuity of Thomas Edison,
the cinematic medium simply wouldn’t be, a fact that the film itself is
well aware of. Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon last caught my radar with Me And Earl And The Dying Girl, and his collaboration with DOP Chung Chung-hoon
shows them both tapping into a similar retro aesthetic in their visuals. A lot
of the film sticks to either period detail or machinery detail, but it also
uses early Kinetograph movement as a reference point for some of the
compositions and transitions, making for a nice tip of the hat.
But that’s more to do with the flavour of the story being
told, that being the original race to literally electrify the nation between
Edison and rival businessman George Westinghouse. It feels a little cheap to
have Nikola Tesla as only a supporting part, with Westinghouse taking agency, but
that almost feels like mercy because it meant he was the most spared by the
disappointingly rote depiction of this crucial time for technology. The actors
are definitely doing their best to inject emotion and character into the
margins, and there’s a wealth of talent on-board, but they aren’t enough to
stop this from feeling like an audio-book version of a Wikipedia article: Just
the facts, as many as can be squeezed in, with more attention put towards what
happened rather than why.
And the details we do get as to the why are…
concerning. Coming from the same writer who made fumbled the ball in adapting
The Giver to the big screen, maybe this is another case of adaptation sickness,
but was Thomas Edison as much of a dick as they portray him as here? Engaging
in dirty tactics in the titular war, some of which veers alarmingly into
disregard for life (between his treatment of a horse and his attempts to keep
his competition’s name synonymous with the electric chair), he doesn’t really
make for the stuff of engaging lead material, Cumberbatch’s best efforts be
damned. Maybe if it leaned further into his and Tesla’s interplay, with Tesla
as the aspiring futurist and Edison trying to preserve the past through his
inventions, it might have made for more resonating stuff. But alas, he’s merely
the only definable character in a sea of narrative pawns.
While there’s definite artistic merit to be found in the
visual aesthetic and some of the smaller moments like Westinghouse’s recurring
Civil War flashbacks, none of it manages to meld together to create a story
that feels worth giving the cinematic treatment. And considering it’s partly
because of this story that we even have the cinematic treatment to begin
with, that’s not a good sign.
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