'Tesla' review: Inventor biopic is far from illuminating

If there’s such a thing as a cult historical figure, it’s the visionary inventor Nikola Tesla. His work helped fuel the rise of electric power in the late 1800s (most of us are aware of the Tesla coil, even if we couldn’t accurately describe it), but his legacy has been overshadowed by better-known captains of industry like Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. Tesla is to electricity what Richard Hell is to punk rock: A mover and shaker in a nascent scene that would produce bigger stars.

Writer-director Michael Almereyda, a lifelong Tesla fan, attempts to illuminate the man in “Tesla,” featuring Ethan Hawke in the title role. It is almost as far from a traditional biopic as Almereyda’s “Hamlet 2000” (also starring Hawke) was from a traditional Shakespeare adaptation. Both are fanciful, boldly modernized and full of creative energy. “Tesla,” however, also wants to educate us properly about its subject and make a case for his contributions to history. The result is a frustrating movie of half-measures that hovers between orthodox historical drama and wild experimentalism.

Things begin straightforwardly enough with Tesla, a brilliant but humorless European immigrant, leaving the workshop of Thomas Edison (a very good Kyle MacLachlan) to strike out on his own. But the movie goes meta when Anne Morgan (Eve Hewson), daughter of financier J.P. Morgan, shows up with a MacBook to tell us Tesla gets fewer Google search results than Edison. We begin to spot little anachronisms, such as soft-serve ice cream, then bigger ones like synth rock and iPhones. It’s all meant to be cheeky and thought-provoking — a nod to how far in the future Tesla was living, perhaps — but the effect is confusing and distracting. Wait’ll you see what “Tesla” does with Tears for Fears’ echt-‘80s pop hit “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”

Lost among the stylistic conceits is a coherent story explaining who’s who (not until the closing credits did I realize Jim Gaffigan had been playing George Westinghouse) and what Tesla was trying to accomplish. Only at the end, when Tesla launches his ill-fated project at Long Island’s Wardenclyffe laboratory (ablaze with atmospheric blue lightning, thanks to Sean Price Williams’ fine cinematography), do we glean that the inventor saw a future of wireless communication.

Hawke plays Tesla with a tortured intensity that, unfortunately, pales next to the charismatic performances of MacLachlan and even the brief Gaffigan. It has to be said: David Bowie, the ultimate cult icon, was a better choice to play Tesla in Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige,” and even Nicholas Hoult brought more color to the role in 2017’s semi-successful “The Current War.”

Kudos to Almereyda for the passion and fearless risk-taking on display in “Tesla.” But the movie, much like its subject, can’t seem to make its best ideas work.