First Hit: Although informative about three great men Edison, Westinghouse, and Tesla, the story wasn’t very compelling about how we electrified the United States.
Growing up, I believed that Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) took Benjamin Franklin’s discovery of electricity and put it to use for all of us. I made the assumption that he alone brought electrical power to the people. I must not have paid attention in school, or the textbooks were wrong, or I was misled by my teachers. My guess was I wasn’t paying attention.
If the information in this film is correct, Edison’s pure genius was in the plethora of products he dreamed up and made real. The electric light bulb was probably his legacy, but he also made products like the phonograph and ways to see motion pictures. Both the phonograph and motion picture machine started as hand-powered units that eventually became electrified.
Yes, he did electrify sections of cities using his DC (direct current) generators and underground copper wires.But it’s limitations, including economics and distance shortcomings, were the downfall of his company to electrify whole cities.
On the other hand, George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) decided to be Edison’s competitor by using AC (alternating current), which allowed him to provide electrical power over long distances inexpensively. The AC system was an invention of Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult), who sold it to Westinghouse. The perceived issue with AC current was that if improperly installed or used, it could harm or kill people.
Tesla first worked for Edison, but because Edison didn’t want to listen to the possibilities of AC power, Tesla left after a short period.
Tesla and Westinghouse worked together to bring inexpensive electrical power to all of the United States. And although each were inventors in their own right, it was Edison who invented many of the practical products we use today.
One of the sweetest parts of the film was when Edison tells Westinghouse about how he felt when one of his many experiments with the incandescent bulb worked. The power of trying and not succeeding. Then trying again and again was meaningful and enduring and beautifully shared.
The critical component of the film was the different personalities of these three men and how it affected their approached to work. When Edison breaks his much-touted promise to not bring harm to another human gets challenged, he’s heartbroken. Tesla was creative in how he documented his inventions. Westinghouse had an ability to look at the big picture and to methodically persevere.
Both Edison and Westinghouse had exciting and intense discussions with the dominant banker and financier J.P. Morgan (Matthew Macfadyen) about how to finance the electrification of cities and about the money they all could make on it through his support.
I thought many of the scenes were interestingly developed but faltered with less impressive follow-through. How did Edison really feel about his wife dying? Did the use of electricity to kill someone as corporal punishment advance this practice of putting people to death for crimes?
Cumberbatch was excellent in many scenes as Edison by bringing a single and driven focus to his work. But I didn’t have a sense of how he became this amazing inventor. Shannon felt a little miscast. He usually plays a darker character because of his looks and intensity; however, as Westinghouse he’s given to be more gentle in his words and actions and it seemed incongruent. Hoult was solid as Tesla, quietly working in the background pulling ideas out of thin air and creatively documenting them in his notebook. Macfadyen was terrific as the financier J.P. Morgan. His practicality and drive to support geniuses were well presented. Tom Holland, as Samuel Insull, Edison’s right hand man, was outstanding. His belief in Edison was well earned. Michael Mitnick wrote a thought-provoking screenplay that will have me do further research on how the US became electrified. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon did a good job of directing this film. I do think there were opportunities missed to delve deeper into the impact of these men and also their histories.
Overall: This was a solid film, but not great, and I think it could have been a great story to tell.