Sundance ’20: Tesla

Nikola Tesla is probably the only inventor to have a heavy metal band and an electric car named after him. His great rival Thomas Edison can’t say that. Fittingly, he now also has the idiosyncratic distinction of being the subject of a Michael Almereyda film. It is concretely based on Tesla’s life, but there is nothing conventional about the way it unfolds on screen in Almereyda’s Tesla, which won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize for use of science in cinema at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Yes, Almereyda covers all the major beats in Tesla’s life, including his early years in Croatia, his brief tenure at Edison’s workshop, his success developing alternating current, his difficult relationships with the Morgan family, and his iconic (or infamous) experiments in Colorado Springs and at Wardenclyffe Tower. However, this is about as far from straight biography as you can get. Instead, Almereyda starts with the approach of his fascinating Stanly Milgram film, Experimenter, cutting loose all narrative restraints and doubling down on surreal stylization.

This time around, he frequently utilizes similar rear-screen projections for disorienting effect, but he also employs the torch-carrying Anne Morgan as a wholly unreliable, fourth wall-puncturing narrator. The film freely skips around the Tesla timeline and often wistfully depicts long hoped-for incidents that never happened in life, much like the fantasy scenes in Annie Hall. The resulting spectacle resembles Milos Forman’s Ragtime if rewritten by Charlie Kaufman, but with a weird mix of mischievousness and wistfulness that is all Almereyda.

If you have seen Experimenter it will help prepare you for the sort of hyper-real effect Almereyda achieves throughout Tesla, even though the earlier profile-in-science was considerably more grounded. This is the sort of film you have to roll with, but if you can maintain your sea-legs and your bearings to any extent, Almereyda’s woozy kaleidoscope is absolutely dazzling to behold. Admittedly, Tesla’s third act crooning of Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is wacky bridge too far, but hey, who’s to tell Almereyda he should start holding back at that point?

Two of the major reasons Tesla works so well are Ethan Hawke and Kyle MacLachlan, who are perfectly cast as Tesla and Edison, in ways that best contrast their differences. Hawke’s Tesla is the king of all brooders, who has contempt for the success he chases. He is an introverted man, uncomfortable in his own skin, somewhat akin to the shy teen Hawke played in Dead Poets Society. In contrast, Edison is a brash American striver. Yet, MacLachlan conveys all his insecurities and fears of failure. He is a rival to Tesla, but not a villain.

The American Side: Niagara Noir

If you think Niagara Falls is a romantic spot, you probably haven’t seen Niagara with Marilyn Monroe and Joseph Cotten. Hopefully, you are also unfamiliar with local P.I. Charlie Paczynski, who specializes in the sleaziest divorce cases possible. When the stripper-partner he employs for honey trap scams is rather inconveniently murdered, the Polish detective will blunder into a far-reaching conspiracy in Jenna Ricker’s The American Side (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Paczynski and “Kat” were basically running a blackmail operation, until one of her “dates” up and killed her. He liked her way more than Sam Spade liked Miles Archer, so he duly follows the clues to a suspicious character named Tom Soberin. When his chief suspect takes a swan dive off the Falls, Paczynski realizes there is a larger scheme at work. It turns out Soberin was once an employee of an experimental energy firm, whose co-founders have had a falling out. It is unclear which faction he ultimately chose, but he supposedly had an affair with Emily Chase, the younger, far less stable but much more alluring sister of Borden Chase, who largely won the corporate power struggle.

Sterling Whitmore, Borden Chase’s ostensible partner, serves up cryptic clues to Paczynski while he develops a high tech barrel sufficiently reinforced to provide safe passage over the American side of the Falls. Evidently, people have made the ill-advised trip on the more forgiving Canadian side, but not from New York. In fact, Paczinski will have no shortage of dubious sources, including a fishy FBI agent, a Serbian spook, and “the Eavesdropper.”

Side starts out as a nifty old school noir that fully capitalizes on the faded glory of its Buffalo and Niagara Falls locales. However, viewers better hold on to their hats when wildly speculative Nikola Tesla schematics enter the picture. Holy death rays, Mike Hammer. It is so crazy, it kind of works.

Co-screenwriter Greg Stuhr has the right kind of nervy presence and caustic attitude for a hardnosed antihero like Paczynski. Alicja Bachleda (so terrific in Ondine) smolders up the lens as Nikki Meeker, the Tesla expert in distress. Matthew Broderick’s Borden Chase will be nobody’s idea of a sinister heavy, but as Emily Chase, Camilla Belle is a hot mess in the grand tradition of Martha Vickers in The Big Sleep. However, nobody can out-noir Robert Forster doing his thing as Whitmore, even when Robert Vaughn and Joe Grifasi (FX the movie) pop up in cameos.

Cinematographer Frank Barrera gives it all a suitably murky, noir glow, while David Shire (whose soundtrack for the original Taking of Pelham One Two Three remains a perennial collector favorite) reinforces the mood with his insinuating score. Like The Big Sleep referenced above, The American Side is a fun film, even when it doesn’t make perfect sense. Recommended for genre fans, it opens this Friday (4/29) in New York, at the IFC Center.