Tesla

The 2020 biographical drama Tesla, written and directed by Michael Almereyda, offers a stylized and unconventional portrait of the brilliant but eccentric inventor Nikola Tesla, played by Ethan Hawke. The film opens with a playful scene of Tesla roller skating in 1893, then flashes back to his early days in 1884 New York, where he works for Thomas Edison (Kyle MacLachlan). Edison dismisses Tesla's ideas for alternating current (AC) technology in favor of his own direct current system and refuses to pay him for promised improvements. Tesla strikes out on his own, developing his revolutionary induction motor and pitching it to investors, while navigating rivalries and financial hurdles.

The story follows Tesla's uphill battle to commercialize AC power, his uneasy alliance with George Westinghouse (Jim Gaffigan), and his complicated interactions with financier J.P. Morgan and Morgan's daughter Anne (Eve Hewson), who serves as a modern-sounding narrator providing self-aware commentary and breaking the fourth wall. The film explores Tesla's visionary pursuit of wireless energy transmission through projects like the Wardenclyffe Tower, his personal isolation, and the contrast between his genius and his struggles with practicality and business. Blending historical events with artistic liberties, anachronisms, and quirky interruptions, the movie captures Tesla as a forward-thinking dreamer who revolutionized electricity but often found himself overshadowed and underfunded.

Overall, it's less a straightforward biopic and more an experimental character study that highlights Tesla's innovative spirit alongside his interpersonal and professional challenges.