Review
THE CURRENT WAR – Review
Two technology titans battle for supremacy in THE CURRENT WAR, a showdown between Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon), as they race to electrify the country with either AC, alternating current, or DC, direct current, power. The disrupter who may shift the balance of power between the inventor and the industrialist is a brilliant immigrant named Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult).
There is much to admire in director Alfonso Gomez‐Rejon’s fine period drama that details the real history struggle between competing technologies and the giants of history behind them. The film should go a ways towards introducing contemporary audiences to the less-remembered George Westinghouse as well as giving us a closer look at Edison and Tesla, although maybe not enough for fans of the latter. But the fact that the film’s release was delayed and that the version being released is labeled the “director’s cut,” indicates that there may be some problems. Indeed, there are some, but mostly of the kind created between audience expectations and the film itself. The title THE CURRENT WAR suggests a technology-heavy kind of historical action movie but the film itself is more a psychological battle and character study between three very different men.
Thomas Alva Edison was his era’s rock star, a famous inventor in an age of invention. Edison patented the inventions created in the crew of inventors at his workshop in Menlo Park. Although the public saw Edison as the benign genius inventor, he also was known to possessed a big ego. He was glad to take credit for the inventions he created with his team and quick to aggressively sue anyone he thought was infringing on his closely-guarded patents. At the time when the story begins, Edison had just patented his studio’s latest invention, the electric light bulb, and was now poised to roll the system to power the inventions out across the country. His demonstration of his direct current electrical grid in a square mile of New York City sparks a clamor to electrify other cities and towns.
After Edison arrogantly snubs wealthy industrialist George Westinghouse by failing to show up for a dinner party being thrown in his honor, Westinghouse realizes he can challenge Edison by offering another kind of electrical system. Alternating current does not have some of the limitations of Edison’s direct current, including costs. Outraged by the challenge, the competitive Edison sets out to show that Westinghouse’s alternating current is too dangerous to use, employing a number of showy demonstrations. Meanwhile, a brilliant visionary from Eastern Europe, Nikola Tesla, arrives in New York, set on making his fortune with his own electrical discoveries. The showdown between Edison and Westinghouse, with Tesla in the mix, eventually focuses on the grand world’s fair being planned for Chicago in 1893.
The historical drama THE CURRENT WAR sounds like a steampunk and history buffs’ dream rolled into one, with famous historical figures like Tesla and Edison facing off and a plethora of late 19th technology. A cast headed by Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon and Nicholas Hoult certainly does not hurt. The film is visually gorgeous, packed with period atmosphere and lavish details, and plenty of steaming, booming 19th machinery and lush late Victorian sets and costumes.
Edison’s mix of aggressive personality and charisma is sure to bring to mind another technology innovator, Steve Jobs, and in fact the films evokes plenty of parallels to the present. This story is not just about the past, as this dramatic historical battle of technologies at the dawn of the modern age set the playbook for competing systems every time a new technology emerges. The battle between Facebook and MySpace detailed in THE SOCIAL NETWORK is one, but there was the fight between Apple and Microsoft, between mainframe computers and desktops, between VHS and Beta video
The major strengths of THE CURRENT WAR are its focus on historical figures, particularly it portrayal of the lesser-remembered George Westinghouse and its willingness to give a more complete picture of Edison. The film is a visual banquet, as one always hopes for a historical film, but its setting among these movers and shakers of the early modern age offers more than most for sheer beauty. It is a feast of top-notch production values and period extravagance, with a splendid cast. After starting out strong by establishing a personal animosity and the competing technologies, the story focuses more on the people behind the technologies. The characters that Shannon and Cumberbatch created are complicated, and there is no good guy – bad guy simplification of the people involved.
That willingness to created complex characters is a strength of the film, as is the way it includes women in story. Edison’s wife Mary (Tuppence Middleton) is not directly involved in his work, and while he loves his wife and children, he sorely neglects them in favor of work, until tragedy strikes. On the other hand, Westinghouse’s wife Marguerite (Katherine Waterston) is his partner in his work, often suggesting new ideas or putting events into perspective, as well as encouraging him. Tesla’s isolation as a single man and an eccentric leaves him at a disadvantage, further complicated by his status as an immigrant and his lack of business sense, despite his other gifts.
The gifted cast and the character-driven story are among the film’s strengths but audience expecting a different kind of film my derail THE CURRENT WAR from wide success. The film’s shortcoming are less the film itself, than a disconnect between audience expectations and what it actually is. First is the expectation that title builds in the mind of audiences. After starting out with a lot of technology and some dazzling scenes, the film settles down to a battle of wills between Edison and Westinghouse, with Tesla playing a more minor role moving between the two. The title implies a technology-heavy struggle between Edison’s direct current and Westinghouse’s alternating current systems, but the in fact the struggle is more psychological and nuanced than one might expect.
However, the acting is superb, with both Cumberbatch and Shannon turning in thoughtful performances. Cumberbatch’s Thomas Alva Edison is the rock star at the start of this battle, the flashy famous name that the public is cheering on. But the film is particularly a showcase for Michael Shannon, who gets a welcome departure from playing villains, something he does so well, to play a quieter, more humane, more balanced man. Westinghouse takes a steady approach, focusing technological problem themselves rather than public perception as Edison does, but also shows a remarkable humanity. But contrast, Edison is allied with banker J.P. Morgan (Matthew McFadden), one of the most famously ruthless and heartless men of his era, and McFadden adds just enough menace without stealing scenes. The other technologist in this equation, Tesla is brilliant scientifically but naive in business, and helps shift the game from one side to another. Hoult’s twitchy, eccentric but touching portrayal of Tesla moves us and Hoult does a nice job of crafting an unique persona but Tesla is a smaller role in this film, which might leave some fans disappointed.
History buffs might also be disappointed in some famous events that the film leaves out, or to which the film only makes a passing visual or verbal reference. We do see Tesla demonstrate some of his visionary discoveries but not the famous one where he lights up a field of light bulbs with wireless electricity. To discredit alternating current, Edison engaged in a number of demonstrations in which he electrocuted animals. There is also a passing visual reference to Edison electrocuting an elephant but the only such gruesome demonstration in the story concerns a horse, and mercifully we see only the before and after of that. The first use of an electric chair is part of the story too but the film takes creative liberties with the timing of that.
Irritatingly, the film perpetuates the myth, near its end, that Edison invented movies, a myth that Edison himself promoted. In fact, movies and movie cameras and projectors were the result of the work of several people working independently in France, Britain and the U.S. Edison was among them, but not the only one.
All in all, THE CURRENT WAR is a good historical drama that highlight an important and dramatic moment in the creation of the modern world, but one that focuses more on the people involved than the technology. It is a more nuanced and human approach to that pivotal time, a drama featuring fine acting, lush images and excellent period detail but perhaps less exciting than it could have been.
THE CURRENT WAR opens Friday, Oct. 25, at the Plaza Frontenac and other theaters.
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
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