Review: Offbeat biography 'Tesla' chronicles the inventor's work and his obsessions

The two previous times filmmaker Michael Almereyda and actor Ethan Hawke teamed up, they tore up the rules of Shakespeare for arresting modern versions of “Hamlet” (2000) and “Cymbeline” (2014) — so why would we think a biographical drama about Nikolai Tesla wouldn’t be a trip?

The finished product, called simply “Tesla,” is an intriguing mix of character study and dissertation, as Hawke and Almereyda labor mightily to find the man behind the mad genius.

If people know much about Nikolai Tesla, it might be the Tesla coil — his invention that produced high-voltage alternating current — or how that device, and Tesla’s championing of the safety of alternating current ran afoul of his old employer, Thomas Edison, who believed direct current was the way of the future.

We’re shown this battle of wills, between the visionary thinker Tesla and the practical inventor and salesman Edison (Kyle MacLachlan), in the movie’s early going, along with Tesla’s partnership with appliance magnate George Westinghouse (Jim Gaffigan) to make AC a viable option to Edison’s DC. As the “current war” fades into history — Tesla won, sort of, though Edison would never admit it — Tesla talks industrial mogul J.P. Morgan (David Keshawarz) to bankroll his grandiose plans to create a radio transmitter that can send sound, and someday even images, around the globe, using the earth itself as a resonator to direct the waves.

Much of Tesla’s story is told by Morgan’s independent-minded daughter, Anne (played by Eve Hewson), whose admiration for Tesla’s work is matched by the indifference Tesla shows to her apparent crush. The only time a woman pierces the bubble of Tesla’s contemplation of his inventions is a close encounter with the actress Sarah Bernhardt (Rebecca Dayan) — with Anne speculating that his interest in Sarah is based largely on her unattainability.

Almereyda — much as he did on his film “Experimenter,” about psychologist Stanley Milgram — is fascinated with the workings of a genius’ mind, and labors mightily to find ways to visualize that brain at work. For the biographical details, Almereyda has Anne talk directly to the camera, sometimes popping open an anachronistic laptop computer to compare the number of Google hits Tesla and Edison’s names score (Edison wins, nearly 2-to-1). Almereyda doesn’t worry much about period details, obviously, and uses the neat visual trick of establishing settings through rear projection. (The irony of telling Tesla’s story using one of Edison’s best-known inventions isn’t lost on Hawke or anyone else onscreen.)

Hawke keeps Tesla reserved, aloof, letting the inventor’s quiet anguish — and his idealism trumping his practicality — emerge through subtle moments. The closest the movie gets to a declarative statement is near the end, when Hawke’s Tesla sings karaoke to Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” whose lyric “I can’t stand this indecision, married to a lack of vision” is as fitting an epitaph for Tesla as any.

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‘Tesla’

★★★

Opening Friday, August 21, at several Megaplex Theatres locations,, and as a video-on-demand rental on most streaming platforms. Rated PG-13 for some thematic material and nude images. Running time: 102 minutes.