Two Tesla Movies: Alternating and Current

Every now and then, Hollywood serves up two very similar movies in close proximity -- the asteroid apocalypse movies Deep Impact and Armageddon, the turn-of-the-century magician films The Prestige and The Illusionist, and so forth. A rather specific pairing has cropped up recently, two movies about the competition between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison over forms of electricity: The Current War and Tesla.

The two films have so much in common that there are even specific scenes that appear in both -- debates over capital punishment, a meeting at the World's Fair. But Tesla does go further in the story of its protagonist's life, devoting its final act to the years after the inventor moved to Colorado Springs and faded into temporary obscurity. (Also: where he'd become a character in The Prestige!)

Despite the overlap, though, Tesla is a quite different movie from The Current War, and it's all about style. I have no idea if writer-director Michael Almereyda was aware of the other movie while making Tesla, but his choices are as radical as they could possibly have been if he did know and was deliberately trying to be different. And frankly, beyond being provocatively strange, I confess I don't quite understand the choices.

There are scenes in Tesla that are outright lies. Narrator character Anne Morgan is there to point out when the movie is lying to you... probably. I mean, you do have to wonder, is she always there for that? Calling attention to the movie's flights of fancy does leave you to ask: is it being completely truthful the rest of the time?

That's only the beginning of the strangeness surrounding the narrator. The character is both a participant in the period-set action and a fourth-wall breaking lecturer presenting a slide show to the audience and talking about Google search results. Not that the movie would be completely realistic without her. Several brief scenes are set against obviously painted canvas backdrops, as they might be for a high school theater production. You're meant to notice this, with lighting sometimes casting shadows on those backdrops and wind machines sometimes making them flap in the breeze.

As I said, I truly don't understand these creative decisions. Are they somehow meant to reflect the visionary mind of Nikola Tesla? How? Are they making the most of a low budget by highlighting the constraint and trying to make it look deliberate? Is it really just because The Current War was stuck on a studio shelf for years before release, Michael Almereyda really did know about it, and he was trying a different approach? Are these the kinds of questions that a good movie is supposed to make you ask?

Here's another question: can a good performance be completely flat? Ethan Hawke stars as Nikola Tesla, and he plays the character as the most buttoned-up, emotionless introvert imaginable. I may be confused about the movie's other creative choices, but Hawke's here is clearly deliberate. Yet while it certainly tells you a lot about Tesla (the character, at least), it certainly doesn't help the movie to be more engaging to watch. Hawke emotes only minimally, and really only in one scene -- the movie's truly bizarre fourth-wall- and time-breaking finale. (I'll SPOIL it and save you 102 minutes: he steps up to the mic and sings "Everybody Wants to Rule the World.")

There are moments where others in the cast seem to be having fun. Kyle MacLachlan plays a pompous Thomas Edison. Eve Hewson is that oddball narrator, Anne Morgan. Comedian Jim Gaffigan plays the wealthy George Westinghouse. Still, the moments of true fun aren't as frequent as the moments of pure strangeness.

Perhaps this movie is for you if either you're just deeply into the real-life Tesla, or you have a thing for quirky movies that refuse to play by the rules. It really wasn't for me. For the few scenes I did connect with, I think I'd give Tesla a D+. But if you're only going to see one "average at best" movie about the AC / DC struggle for dominance, I'd pick The Current War.