Synopsis
An adventurous, visionary inventor deserves an adventurous, visionary biopic. This is a central premise behind TESLA, writer/director Michael Almereyda’s distillation of the life and work of Nikola Tesla, the enigmatic pioneer of electrical science who rose from poverty and obscurity to achieve technological breakthroughs that continue to define and shape our modern world.
Ethan Hawke plays Tesla, an immigrant and outsider born in a small rural village in what is now Croatia. Proud, brilliant, and socially awkward, Tesla is a promising employee at Thomas Edison’s Machine Works but fails to interest Edison (Kyle MacLachlan) in his revolutionary alternating current (AC) motor. Tesla’s break with Edison kicks off a life-long rivalry; both men are mavericks, but with opposite personalities and temperaments.
Tesla’s search for funding leads him to George Westinghouse (Jim Gaffigan), another powerful captain of industry, who successfully finances and promotes Tesla’s groundbreaking electrical system. But the impatient inventor is already devising unprecedented methods for transmitting light, energy and information, without wires and throughout the globe. Working in an open-roofed Colorado laboratory Tesla transmits lightning from the earth to the sky, and he dares to apply his discoveries to a world-wide wireless system, a high-stakes undertaking backed by J.P. Morgan (Donnie Keshawarz).
Additional Notes
TESLA opens in cinemas 7 January 2021