RogerEbert.com
Tesla proves to be a completely liberated biopic, so much so that it's out of reach.
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Tesla
Oscar nominee Ethan Hawke is Nikola Tesla, inventor of technological marvels, in this unconventional biopic from director Michael Almereyda (Experimenter). Co-starring Eve Hewson (2018's Robin Hood) and Golden Globe winner Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks), Almereyda places laptops and smartphones in the hands of characters surrounding Tesla to help tell his story in a unique way.
Brilliant, visionary Nikola Tesla (Hawke) fights an uphill battle to bring his revolutionary electrical system to fruition, then faces thornier challenges with his new system for worldwide wireless energy. The film tracks Tesla’s uneasy interactions with his fellow inventor Thomas Edison (MacLachlan) and his patron George Westinghouse (Jim Gaffigan). Another thread traces Tesla’s sidewinding courtship of financial titan J.P. Morgan (Donnie Keshawarz), whose daughter Anne (Hewson) takes a more than casual interest in the inventor. Anne analyzes and presents the story as it unfolds, offering a distinctly modern voice to this scientific period drama which, like its subject, defies convention.
Less2020Rating: M102 minsUSA
DramaTrue Story & BiographyHistorical
- Director:
- Michael Almereyda ('Experimenter', 'Marjorie Prime', 'Nadja')
- Writer:
- Michael Almereyda
- Cast:
- Ethan HawkeKyle MacLachlanEve HewsonJosh HamiltonHannah GrossJim GaffiganDonnie Keshawarz
Tesla | Reviews
58%178 reviewsRotten Tomatoes® Score
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CNN
[Tesla is not] especially memorable, which is too bad, squandering... Ethan Hawke, very intense and brooding as Nikola Tesla.
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Rolling Stone
In Michael Almereyda's postmodern biopic of Nicola Tesla, a mesmerizing Ethan Hawke plays the late Serbian inventor who lit the spark for our own wireless world. It's an exhilarating film that roams as free as Tesla's imagination.
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Variety
Almereyda lays tracks to take Tesla in a dozen wild directions. . . . Yet, having ordered the audience onboard, Almereyda doesn’t go anywhere with the gambit.
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Screen Daily
It can be a challenge to get on this movie’s frequency, but the strange signals Tesla emits are nonetheless fascinating.
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IndieWire
If Almereyda fails to pierce the inventor’s skin and expose his circuity, his gauzy film nevertheless has fun exploring the idea that we’re all wired differently.
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Hollywood Reporter
The degree to which the Tesla story syncs with Almereyda's abiding fascinations is clear in every frame of this contemplative, questioning, soulfully philosophical film.
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