#michael mitnick

Imagine a History Channel special, or perhaps one of those educational classroom videos but with A-list actors, and you’ve pretty much got a hold on The Current War. Too much of the already-slim hour-and-forty-minute runtime is spent on visual razzle-dazzle to really get at the heart of the story, while the portrayal of the people involved is largely surface (and mostly fictional). The battle over who got to power America is one of the most compelling stories in this country’s history, absolutely begging for a great movie, but this isn’t it. As a massive nerd of both the normal and historical variety, I almost can’t imagine there’s anyone who doesn’t know the basics of the Edison-Westinghouse feud; it’s such a cornerstone of the geek world that I expect Disney to buy the rights any day now. Thomas Edison, who refined (but did not invent) the light bulb, got into a tiff with George Westinghouse, whose name you might see if you look at your grandparents’ old appliances. At issue was whose electric current could better power the nation. AC and DC don’t just form the name of a band you hear at sporting events---they represent two distinct ways to provide people with electricity, and at the turn of the 20th century they formed the basis of a true battle of the titans, waged in front of the press and in public demonstrations. Direct current, argued Edison, was safer and more reliable; Westinghouse argued the same for the alternating current system. The details of differences between the two are the stuff of science textbooks rather than film reviews; as in love as I am with the story, I’m no engineer.

This fight is often depicted as a battle between the greedy, careless Edison and the more egalitarian, noble-minded Westinghouse. The Current War opts to depict both as complex men with many scars and ghosts, each of whom really and truly believe their system is the safest and best. Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) is obsessive to the point of rudeness. Other than his wife Mary (Tuppence Middleton), his two children and his bluntly honest-but-loyal assistant Samuel Insull (Tom Holland), he has little use for other humans, other than as tools used to fulfill his visions. This extends to himself: his own welfare can absolutely be sacrificed for the advancement of his genius. Cumberbatch essentially imports his Sherlock Holmes wholesale, giving us an Edison who seems barely aware of the world outside his laboratory, though with a touch more ambition: he is willing to lie to the press and to the courts to win a fight, and unlike Holmes is certainly aware of his own fame and legacy. His employee and later rival under Westinghouse, Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult) is not fleshed out in any detail, but then, he isn’t the focus.

Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) is portrayed, by comparison, as interested only in the good of the country, and willing to burn money to see his vision of energy realized. He’s a less compelling character, at least in this movie, than Edison, who seems to have absorbed most of writer Michael Mitnick and director Alfonso Gomez-Reion’s attention. His wife, played by Katherine Waterston, is also curiously underutilized considering who was cast in the role. Shannon’s portrayal is even-handed at all times, and his most compelling moment is a flashback in which he gets himself out of a Civil War-era jam with clever trickery and a knowledge of mechanics.

Yet that sequence falls prey to the movie’s central issue: an over-reliance on editing gimmicks. It is dribbled in in three or four minute-long chunks over the movie, when it would have had more impact if it were presented succinctly, in a single scene. Throughout the film, Gomez-Rejon seems intent on visually emphasizing the wonder of the age of electricity, rather than fleshing out the people behind it. At times, the film even takes a short break from the narrative to show us montages of things lit up by the new power source, or even more oddly still, seemingly unrelated bits of film footage---something shown to us long before Edison begins talking about the movie camera, so that their inclusion is jarring. These asides sometimes extend to the people themselves, who regularly break the first rule of a great historical drama: they know they are living in the past. Both Edison and Westinghouse regularly say things aimed squarely at audiences in 2019---things that, as forward-thinking as both men could be, they would not have actually said, because they were not seers. The movie even wraps with a word from Hoult’s Tesla where he seems to be speaking directly to us, like one of the animatronic Presidents at Disney World. The filmmakers seem to think that we won’t understand the import of what is happening unless someone speaks it out loud.

Mitnick, who reportedly finalized the screenplay over sixty drafts and ten years, has a script that shines when it focuses on Edison and Insull, and the sometimes heated interplay between the two. Yet with only an hour and 41 minutes to work with, the movie zeroes in on costumes and gee whiz shots of technology’s power instead of spending the time necessary to really let us into this fascinating era…and that’s after executive producer Martin Scorsese’s pull allowed Gomez-Reion to cut time from the original version, which seems strange to my eyes. This story needed more time, not less. It would have been suitable to the big, nearly-three-hour historical epics Hollywood used to be able to make, before endless cycles of franchises wore away audience attention spans. The treatment it has gotten is full of data and has one excellent performance in Cumberbatch, yet ultimately ends up devoid of illumination.

Verdict: Average

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

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When classics get adapted or updated, I often find myself asking: What’s the added value? What do you get from Shakespeare with penguins that you don’t get better from Shakespeare straight up?

Idris Elba to direct, star in Hunchback of Notre Dame movie for Netflix

The actor has signed on to star in, direct, and produce a new film version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame for Netflix, EW has confirmed. Michael Mitnick (The Current War) is writing the as-yet-untitled script, which will be a “modern retelling” of Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel.

Like the Disney movie, Elba’s version is described as a “sonic and musical experience,” and Elba will also be producing the film’s music.

I was encouraged to see the new clip from The Current War on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. It shows the heart of the struggle to win over the public trust for an emerging technology. The previous trailer took the Highlander approach (“There can be only one!”) and that just doesn’t work any more.

·         Two rich dudes fighting a turf war over 100 years ago—what a snoozefest!

·         Showing how the rich use media to manipulate the public in hopes of gaining power and more wealth—what could be more relevant?