Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Thomas Edison in the film, which has been re-released as a director’s cut.
Full disclosure: I have not seen the “director’s cut” of The Current War. I saw the cut that debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017, the version that subsequently got caught up in the collapse of the Weinstein Company, which is also the version that had a UK theatrical release this summer. Unlike many of my fellow critics, I really liked the original cut of the film, and I feel confident in recommending even this new version to you. Here’s why.
Apparently this “director’s cut” restores five scenes that had been snipped out of that earlier, Harvey Weinstein-dictated version, yet it is also, somehow, 10 minutes shorter. It’s difficult to see how any such changes could go very far to address the savage criticisms the film has faced.
But it’s also hard to see how such changes would negatively impact the things I liked about the film. Benedict Cumberbatch as Thomas Edison! Michael Shannon as George Westinghouse! Matthew Macfadyen as J.P. Morgan! Nicholas Hoult as Nikola Tesla! This based-on-fact technical battle to light up our world isn’t going to be to everyone’s taste, and there certainly are plenty of valid criticisms to lob at this movie.
I love how director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon sidesteps typical costume-drama stodginess with an — ahem — electrifying visual style and a decidedly modern flavor to the storytelling, but some viewers might find it jarring or gimmicky. And it’s also true that there’s more than enough drama and character in this bit of history to keep a television series going for years. (Tesla is but a minor supporting character here, when he deserves a movie on his own; perhaps this is something the added scenes attempt to deal with.)
All that said, it’s rare we get a big movie intended to be a crowd-pleasing night out that is so full of ideas. The Current War is not merely about the comparatively minute details of how dreamy, free-spirited inventor Edison and the tough-as-nails businessman Westinghouse — Cumberbatch and Shannon are brilliantly cast — raced to test and install radically diverse technological solutions for delivering power. It’s also about how quickly a new technology can reach a saturation point so that we can barely remember life before it, and about the unforeseen side effects such advancements can spin off; no spoilers, but if electricity can kill if you’re not careful, there are deliberate applications of that. And that necessitates a PR battle to craft the public reaction to this new technology. New tech is never just about the tech.
Those intrigued by the intersections between science and culture, as I am, may find this a grand geek adventure with plenty of resonance for the world today, almost 150 years later. (Edison is Steve Jobs; Westinghouse is Bill Gates.) This is a gripping tale of two wildly different personalities, and how the clash and competition between them had an enormous influence on the world as we know it today.
The Current War asks us to consider how the development of technology is shaped by the people who create it, and why a desire for profit should win out over other motives. This may be the way the world is, but by holding it up for our consideration, the film sneakily asks us to wonder why it couldn’t be otherwise.
