The Current War: Director's Cut (2019)

Score: 4 / 5

After two years of waiting (and apparent editing, following the Weinstein debacle), we finally have it. The film about the war of the currents, the late 1800s competition between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse over control of U.S. electricity development. And, really, I only knew that from watching this movie.

If you like history and already know the story, you might not enjoy The Current War because I'm sure the facts get twisted and glossed over. Fast dialogue and aggressively sharp editing made me feel like I was constantly catching up to the characters, trying to remember their names and significance. That's not to say the film doesn't work hard to help us understand, just that it moves so quickly and covers so much ground that I'm sure I missed some key bits of the story. That's more a failing on my part, but in a story that tries to include so much, surely they could have stayed with a few more facts and been less obtuse with inside jokes about Nikola Tesla and J.P. Morgan.

Then again, the intense stylization of this film is awesome. Fabulously theatrical -- the director is Alfonso Gomez-Rejon of Glee and American Horror Story -- the movie draws more attention to itself than to its subjects. Swirling, zooming cinematography flies us from lights to darkness and seems especially interested in sharply angled close-up shots. Props are often oversized and spectacular: none more so than Edison's lightbulb map of the States where he keeps track of which electricity system owns which markets. Beautiful costumes and richly decorated sets often suggested the theatricality of this piece, not unlike Joe Wright's Anna Karenina but less obviously artificial.

I'm also interested in the strange timeliness of this movie. It seems to draw parallels to our own rapidly evolving techno-culture, and offers ample warnings of the consumptive commodification in capitalism, especially among rich white men who always want more. A fascinating edge to this story is that Edison repeatedly warms that Westinghouse's alternating current is deadly, and goes so far as to kill animals to prove it. Edison works secretly to create the electric chair with this AC, but is outed as the hypocrite he is. My favorite sequence in the film is of the Chicago World's Fair, and as the beautiful lights flare to life, the film intercuts the death of the first person legally executed by electric chair, William Kemmler. With great power, the film screams to us, comes great responsibility.