With Powerful Performances, The Current War Illuminates the True Story of Electricity

After what can safely be called a tumultuous road to release, director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon‘s historical drama The Current War is finally hitting theaters. The film first debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017 to less than favorable reviews, but the cut screened at that event had been tampered with with and edited by Harvey Weinstein in preparation for its distribution—going against Gomez-Rejon’s vision. Upon the revelations of Weinstein’s rampant sexual assault and harassment and the subsequent crumbling of his distribution company, The Current War fell by the wayside. However, Gomez-Rejon, who had had previously proven himself a more than capable director with 2015’s sleeper hit Me, Earl and the Dying Girl, was given an opportunity rarely available to others. After two years spent fighting to bring his vision of the film to light, the director’s cut of The Current War was given another chance at a theatrical release date with the backing of the newly formed 101 Studios.

Tom Holland as Samuel Insull and Benedict Cumberbatch as Thomas Edison. Dean Rogers/101 Studios

The film chronicles the story of the competitive, heated, and oftentimes toxic race between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse to electrify the country and eventually secure the rights to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. It boasts several gorgeous set pieces and plays host to powerful and compelling performances by Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Shannon as Edison and Westinghouse, respectively, alongside prominent supporting actors such as Tom Holland, Katherine Waterston, and a reserved yet effective Nicholas Hoult as Nikola Tesla.

The film’s titular war centers on the battle between Edison’s lower-voltage DC (direct current) system and Westinghouse’s higher-voltage AC (alternating current) model to bring electric lighting to homes and cities across the United States. For much of the 1880s, Edison saw success in expanding DC and securing the rights to more and more cities across the country. However, due to the lower voltage, the electricity was only able to travel relatively short distances without the use of generating plants within populated areas. This shortcoming paved the way for Westinghouse to challenge Edison’s dominance with AC’s capacity to easily change the voltage to a higher transmission rates and then lower it once again to safer levels through the use of transformers and power lines. Caught between the tale of these two industry giants is the story of Tesla, the quiet and quirky Serbian American futurist who left Edison’s company after a pay dispute and an argument over the efficiencies of the AC and DC systems only to struggle to bring his grand ideas to reality and later find himself in the employ of Westinghouse.

Nicholas Hoult as Nikola Tesla. Dean Rogers/101 Studios

The Current War is a good movie, but it falls a little short of great. It’s generally smart and tells a fascinating and important story, but it sometimes stumbles over the emotional beats while moving at a breakneck pace through what at times feels like a series of important moments strung together solely to get viewers from point A to point B. There’s a lot of story to be told—the rivalry between these two figures lasted well over a decade—yet the film condenses much of this to fit within its 1-hour, 47-minute run time.

Where it does succeed, however, is in bringing a much needed sense of fallibility and humanity to these larger-than-life figures from our history books. Cumberbatch’s Edison is no hero, but a flawed yet brilliant thinker with an unhealthy drive to be the best at any cost. Shannon’s Westinghouse is more conscientious, yet also driven by jealousy and a desire for recognition. Gomez-Rejon makes a point to show both men at their best but also at their worst; we’re given glimpses into the good, the bad, and the ugly of innovation through competition. While the end goal of the rivalry is to bring light and electricity to as many people as possible, the road is paved with smear tactics and shady practices. The film definitely takes some cinematic liberties, but it often stays relatively close to the truth even at its wildest—including the increasingly hostile media war between Edison and Westinghouse, the public electrocution of animals, and Edison’s ties to the creation of the electric chair (and collusion attempts to put Westinghouse’s name on it).

Katherine Waterston and Michael Shannon as Marguerite and George Westinghouse. Dean Rogers/101 Studios

Underneath the surface, there’s an interesting point to be made about who history favors in a story such as this. In illuminating these historical figures, Gomez-Rejon shows us that, despite promoting the less efficient system, Edison had a knack for fame and publicity that ultimately gave him a preeminent and favorable place in history. On the other hand, Tesla’s pragmatism and Westinghouse’s more principled modesty left them to fall into relative obscurity for many years after their deaths. In some sense, this film works as a deconstruction of the historical figures we idolize and the ways in which we allow them to define our notions of history. All in all, if the The Current War comes off as a little overstuffed and a little too fast paced at times, there’s still a certain spark at its core that comes from the the captivating story it manages to shed light on and the powerhouse performances that bring it to life.