The Current War review: A solid historical drama drowned in cinematic tricks

Dir: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon, Tom Holland, Nicholas Hoult, Katherine Waterston and Tuppence Middleton. 12A, 107 mins

The Current War was always fighting a losing battle. Originally a Weinstein Company project, the film was primed as an Oscar contender, but premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017 to less-than-stellar reviews. As director Alfonso Gomez-Rejo later explained, Harvey Weinstein had put enormous pressure on him to deliver a cut in time for the festival deadline, leaving him deeply unhappy with the version shown. Only a few weeks later, the first wave of sexual abuse accusations aimed at Weinstein was published. The Current War was swiftly shelved and the Weinstein Company disintegrated. The film’s future was in limbo. Now, nearly two years later, it quietly makes its way into cinemas, having been picked up for distribution by Entertainment Film Distributors in the UK and with Gomez-Rejon having been given the opportunity to recut the film.

You’d hope this story would have a more triumphant ending but, unfortunately, The Current War seems to have suffered from its tumultuous production history. Or, just maybe, it was always destined to be this ungainly. It’s a solid historical drama drowned in cinematic tricks, with every scene viewed from about six different angles – the camera drops down low, hovers overhead, pushes in uncomfortably close and teeters at unnatural angles in such quick succession that you’re at risk of getting nausea.

All these techniques serve only to distract from the intriguing, if not particularly hair-raising narrative. The Current War deals not in heroes and villains, but in two men corrupted by their own ambitions. Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) is in the midst of bringing electric power to America, but is too stubborn to admit that his use of direct current is less efficient than alternating current, which is not only cheaper but can transmit power over longer distances. He ignores the protestations of his new hire Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult), who, as history has proven, knew exactly what he was talking about.

Meanwhile, businessman George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) has forged ahead with alternating current, safe in the knowledge that while Edison can light up the homes of wealthy city dwellers, it’s his company alone that has the means to connect the entire country. Edison, now increasingly desperate, tries to turn the press on his competitor, insisting that alternating current is a killer. He electrocutes a horse to prove his point (it’s worth noting: the elephant often thought to have been used by Edison in a demonstration was actually killed 10 years later, by different people and purely for spectacle). And, as the invention of the electric chair arrives on the scene, with neither man wanting to have their name attached to a death machine, the film illustrates neatly the ethical lines they’re willing to cross in order not to be seen as one of history’s losers.

Cumberbatch and Shannon lend their characters plenty of wounded nobility, though the former has the easier job – it’s another arrogant genius to add to the ever-growing pile of arrogant geniuses the actor has played. Shannon, meanwhile, is far more subtle, portraying Westinghouse as a man of quiet reason and determination, who mostly lets his moustache do the talking (and what an impressive moustache it is). Elsewhere, Tom Holland, as Edison’s assistant Samuel Insull, is given little to do beyond flinch every time his boss goes off the rails. It’s Katherine Waterston, as Westinghouse’s wife Marguerite, who makes the stronger impression. On the page, she’s the standard supportive woman, always floating in the background, but the actor enters each scene with such a steely look in her eye, it’d be no surprise if it turned out she’d been pulling the strings all along.

Gomez-Rejon, who made a promising debut with 2015’s Me Earl and the Dying Girl, does at least pace the film in a way that really feels like we’re on a one-way train to moral degradation, but it’s equally burdened by a fear that all this talk of deals and patents is far too dull and technical for the average audience. And so, on top of the camerawork, there’s an aggressive use of Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans’s score, which punctuates scenes that should feel intimate and pensive with the incessant rhythms of a telegraph. There are simply too many elements at work here. And, though there’s something worthwhile to discover at the heart of The Current War, it’s just a question of whether it’s worth the effort of tuning out all the unnecessary noise.

The Current War is released in UK cinemas on 26 July