Movie reviews: A literal power struggle in Tesla; and Millie Bobby Brown delightful in Enola Holmes
Ethan Hawke in Tesla
The word genius tends to be tossed about quite a bit these days, but the inventor Nikola Tesla was truly a visionary born before his time. (12A) opens in the 1880s with the Croatian immigrant, played by Ethan Hawke, recently arrived in America and already frustrated by the blinkered approach of his employer, Thomas Edison (Kyle MacLachlan).
Edison is promoting direct current (DC) as the means of harnessing the electricity that would change the world; Tesla, on the other hand, not only champions alternating current (AC), but has devised ‘a whole system for generating and utilising power’.
The titanic struggle that ensues is only part of the story, however; narrated by Anne Morgan (Eve Hewson), the daughter of the wealthy industrialist JP Morgan (Donnie Keshawarz), Tesla explores the full extent of Tesla’s vision, which included the Tesla Coil and his invention of wireless technology. Written and directed by Michael Almereyda, Tesla is as narratively audacious as its subject’s imagination: speaking to us from the 19th century, Anne Morgan employs Google searches as she brings to life famous black-and-white photographs of Tesla, while settings — New York, the Rocky Mountains — are frequently established by way of painted backdrop.
Meanwhile, whole scenes, including meetings between Edison and Tesla, are subsequently revealed as imaginary, and then reconfigured to more closely resemble the historical truth.
The deliberately arch storytelling has the effect of a palimpsest, in which fiction and history, the old and the new, are overlaid to create a fascinating account (or accounts) of a storied life. Ethan Hawke and Eve Hewson are in excellent form here, and especially in terms of the ambiguous relationship between Tesla and Anne Morgan, which is chaste but erotically charged — much like the AC electrical system, it generated no sparks — but the most enjoyable aspect of the film is Michael Almereyda’s ceaselessly inventive storytelling as he manipulates time, space and reality to persuade us that ‘the modern world is a dream Tesla dreamed first’.
Repression ****
(15A) stars Thekla Reuten as Marianne Winter, recently relocated from upstate New York to Aberdeen, where she takes up a position as a child psychiatrist.
Struggling to deal with an unspecified trauma, Marianne throws herself into her work, striving to communicate with the orphaned Manny (Elijah Wolf), who is trying to cope with the loss of his parents by drawing crude pictures of horrific accidents.
Gradually, Marianne starts to realise that Manny’s pictures relate to real events — but is the hostile Manny reflecting his reality, or is he able to predict and control the future? Written by Ben Hopkins and Elbert van Strien, with van Strien directing, Repression is every bit as tense a psychological thriller as its Hitchcockian title suggests.
It’s claustrophobic from the outset, with most of the Aberdeen-set interiors dimly-lit and drawn from a limited palette of greys, dark blues and dull browns, and the story quickly begins to twists in upon itself as the viewer starts to wonder if Marianne’s obsession with Manny’s apparently prodigious powers is a projection of her own disturbed mind.
Meanwhile, Marianne is also contending with some Big Questions: is there a God who is responsible for every tiny thing, or is the universe simply a product of each individual’s limited perception? Thekla Reuten and the young Elijah Wolf are excellent here, with the latter entirely believable as the malign, troubled Manny.
Both of them brilliantly marshalled by Elbert van Strien, who develops his own short film, De marionettenwereld (1993). A compelling, mind-bending blend of faith, metaphysics and quantum mechanics, Repression is one of the most thought-provoking movies you’ll see this year. (various platforms)
(12A) stars Millie Bobby Brown as the eponymous heroine, the brilliant teenage sister of the better known Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mycroft (Sam Claflin).
When their mother, Mrs Holmes (Helena Bonham Carter), mysteriously disappears on the morning of Enola’s 16th birthday, Mycroft decides to send Enola to a finishing school for ladies, whereupon the free-spirited Enola dons a disguise and makes good her escape.
Setting out to find her mother, Enola encounters the infamous young Viscount Tewksbury (Louis Partridge), and is soon embroiled in an adventure every bit as yarn-ripping as any experienced by her brothers.
Adapted by Jack Thorne from Nancy Springer’s The Case of the Missing Marquess, and directed by Harry Bradbeer, Enola Holmes is a somewhat confused but enjoyable romp, and not least because Millie Bobby Brown is hugely engaging in the lead role (her asides to camera are a particular delight).
Irreverent in the face of male privilege, endlessly resourceful and fiercely intelligent, Enola embodies the Suffragettes’ spirit of revolution as she goes freewheeling through London deciphering clues and seeing off assassins.
