Michael Almereyda's Tesla treats a biopic as an experiment rather than a formality, letting the inventor's own restlessness bleed into the way the film is put together.
What is Tesla about?
Released in 2020, Tesla follows Nikola Tesla, played by Ethan Hawke, through the years he spent chasing a way to send electrical power and light across long distances without wires. The film tracks his uneasy rivalry with Thomas Edison, played by Kyle MacLachlan, whose direct-current empire stood against Tesla's alternating-current ambitions, and his friendship with Anne Morgan, played by Eve Hewson, the daughter of financier J.P. Morgan. Rather than move in a straight biographical line, director Michael Almereyda breaks the fourth wall repeatedly, has characters narrate outcomes before they happen, and drops in anachronistic details that remind the audience they are watching a constructed account rather than a record. Hannah Gross, Josh Hamilton, Jim Gaffigan, Lois Smith, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach fill out the circle of investors, engineers, and family who surround Tesla as his ideas outpace the money willing to fund them.
About the cast
Ethan Hawke plays Tesla as a man more comfortable with theory than with people, opposite Kyle MacLachlan's brisk, businesslike Edison and Eve Hewson's Anne Morgan, who narrates parts of the film directly to the audience. Hannah Gross, Josh Hamilton, Jim Gaffigan, Lois Smith, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach round out the supporting cast of financiers and collaborators.
Context & significance
Tesla sits inside a broader run of biography and drama films from around 2020 that chose an unconventional form over a conventional timeline, a choice Almereyda has favored throughout his career as a director working outside mainstream studio structure. The film treats Tesla's story as inseparable from the era's fight between competing visions of how electricity should reach the public, a conflict the film keeps returning to as its emotional center. Its willingness to break narrative convention has made it a title people discuss specifically for its form, not only its subject.
Watching Tesla on Ktime
Tesla can be watched on K-Time with a free account login, and Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles are both offered for viewers who want to follow the story in Farsi. Browsing the film's page requires no account at all; only pressing play does.