'Tesla': Film Review – Ethan Hawke plays a cerebral and humor-challenged version of the inventor.
), George Westinghouse , and J.P. Morgan , and his rumored flirtations with Morgan’s daughter Anne and the actress Sarah Bernhardt . Anne narrates the film, mostly interrupting to say which scenes are Almereyda’s own invention, including an ice cream fight with Edison, and a later scene where the two men share pie. Almereyda embraces fakery.
If there’s a big idea in “Tesla,” it’s hard to see — and not just because the film is claustrophobically set indoors, and lit by candles, matches, and glowing bulbs. Occasionally, cinematographer Sean Price Williams jolts the audience with an image that wouldn’t exist if Tesla hadn’t invented it, from the neon sizzle of the Tesla Coil, to the sight of Sarah Bernhardt, backlit and beautiful, thanks to the power of AC current.
Hawke refuses to play Tesla the way he’s popularly imagined: an innocent dreamer. His Tesla is stoic and disenchanted, so incapable of humor that he can claim to hear “the planets greeting each other” and no one thinks it’s a joke. In turn, Anne tells him that electric currents makes her feel the presence of her dead cousin. She’s not joking, either, but the film chooses to drop the issue.
Almereyda lays tracks to take “Tesla” in a dozen wild directions. Early on, Anne whips out a MacBook to use Google image search. Later, Edison kills time on a cellphone. Almereyda’s entitled to meld past and present — Tesla was a man of the future. Yet, having ordered the audience onboard, Almereyda doesn’t go anywhere with the gambit.
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