Mark Twain may or may not have written that history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes. If he did or did not it doesn’t really matter; it’s a great line. It also neatly addresses what is happening in Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon film, The Current War.
The film chronicles the rise of electric power and the two titans of industry that created the electrical grid in the US, Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon). Edison is known as the Wizard of Menlo Park for inventing the phonograph, which made Edison a celebrity. That fame carried him through the rest of his life. He was like the Steve Jobs of his day.
Westinghouse was a rich and powerful industrialist; he was known as being a very smart businessman but he was not an inventor or considered a genius in the way that Edison was. They both wanted to bring power to the people but via different systems. Edison championed the DC (Direct Current) system and Westinghouse the AC (Alternating Current) system, i.e. where AC/DC get their name. Both systems had their pros and cons, just like everything, it’s a compromise to get you closest to your goal.
With the scene set, I struggled to understand thematically what was going on here. Cumberbatch was channelling his inner Sherlock Holmes by being the smartest man in the room with a quick and witty retort at every turn. It is fun to watch but it didn’t lead to much character development.
It is hard to feel too much empathy for the main characters, Edison and Westinghouse. They are both hugely successful and powerful, and if not for their egos, Edison – much more than Westinghouse – would remain that but they went head to head in this battle of wills. At one point Edison walked into a meeting with the President and J.P. Morgan (Matthew MacFayden) – perhaps the richest man in America at the time – as if it was nothing. You don’t really feel bad for these guys.
The notion of legacy echoed throughout the film, with both men trying to find their place in history. We now, as we did then, have an idolatry of innovators (not my saying, Prof Scott Galloway’s) wherein we give them too much credit, they extract too much rent, and they hold too much power of things that they don’t have any expertise. Edison constantly made things about him, Westinghouse wanted to give light to the masses.
Obviously, with time we start to see these men in different lights. Nikola Tesla (Nicholaus Hoult) was arguably the bigger genius than Edison and it was he who solved the problem that kept the AC and DC apart but his role was very small in this film.
I am unsure what the filmmakers were trying to say in this film; potentially it was a warning for how we are acting currently. It could be a sermon looking at our past mistakes and giving us pause on how we choose to progress forward from here. Because history isn’t repeating itself but it damn sure feels very similar.
25th February 2020
By Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe