Tesla Review

Pairing the wonderful Kyle MacLachlan with the ever-satisfying Ethan Hawke should be a dream come true. But under the eyes of director Michael Almereyda, it becomes a cacophony of nightmarish visuals and vivid displays of passion from its cast and crew. Unfortunately, no amount of passion from this cast, no level of competence from a somewhat solid director, could ever save Tesla from being a damnable, incoherent film that has nothing to offer outside of flashy visuals, cheap reliance on fourth wall breaks, and the occasional realisation that they’re meant to be discussing the work and feud of both Nikolai Tesla and Thomas Edison.

Almereyda’s approach to telling Tesla’s story is a strange one. It never fully commits to its weirdness, cutting short the more enjoyable moments, like MacLachlan and Hawke having an ice-cream fight. We’re often stuck with narration, the easy way out of delegating information, and these breaks are never applied coherently or engagingly here. Eve Hewson, portraying Anne Morgan, details and fleshes out our story, a MacBook in one hand, Victorian garbs donning her, it’s a contrast that Almereyda wants to make for no other reason than having the ability to do so. Hewson ascertains that Googling both Tesla and Edison will lead to more results for Edison, than that of Tesla. The purpose of this is rather obvious, but it strikes me as rather dumb, and just a tad pretentious given the nature of its approach.

This pompous style can be found rather frequently, in inarticulate dialogue, seemingly thrown together without much care for the actual story of Tesla’s life. I can appreciate the need to set yourself apart from the other contemporaries that tried to tell the tale of Tesla, but Tesla comes across as ineffectual. It reminds me of Capone, name-dropping characters and movements of the period, but the actual events that happen to our characters feel completely happenstance. You could swap out Hawke’s rendition of Tesla for just about anyone, and it’d make no major difference.

Although I can appreciate the low budget, there are certainly easier, far more feasible ways of working around that than what Tesla attempts. Backdrops that make it clear they’re indoors, fabrications of the outside, with very little time spent trying to correct these blemishes or outshine them in any way. They stick out like a sore thumb, often brief but completely underwhelming, detracting from what little build-up this cast can manage.  

I wonder how many more Tesla and Edison pictures we’re going to have to filter our way through over the coming years. We’ve had David Bowie flutter around the screen as Nikolai Tesla in The Prestige, and Nicholas Hoult did the same in The Current War a few years prior to Tesla. Benedict Cumberbatch has taken up the reigns as Edison also, the only aspect MacLachlan and Cumberbatch having in common being how totally underwhelming their performances are. I had expected a lot more from the man who directed Marjorie Prime, and it seems that he was more engaged with applying the stylish nature of his sci-fi drama than he was of piecing together a competent narrative. His aim of creating a visually slick piece works to some degree, but there’s not enough straight-shooting for biopic fans, and the slew of visual calamity is a wasted opportunity, never taken as far as it should go.