Bob's Cinema Diary 8/21/'20 -- 'Tesla' and 'African Violet'

Tesla

     For most Americans, the name Tesla refers to an electric vehicle that was brought to the market by Elon Musk. It’s also true that Nikola Tesla was an inventor who did pioneering work in the field of electricity. In Tesla,  a distractingly artsy offering from director Michael Almereyda, Ethan Hawke plays the reticent genius who got crosswise with Thomas Edison (Kyle MacLachlan). Tesla's inventing life also intersected with both George Westinghouse (Jim Gaffigan) and J.P. Morgan (Donnie Keshawarz). Morgan’s daughter Anne (Eve Hewson) provides narration for a film that includes bold theatrical strokes and touches on Tesla’s relationship with actress Sarah Bernhardt (Rebecca Dayan). Almereyda pushes the film's artifice to the forefront: Such cinematic sleight of hand can be entertaining but also can distance us from both the characters and the story. Hawke turns Tesla into an oddball genius while Almereyda adds anachronisms (Anne using a MacBook) and visual jests (Tesla and Edison shoving ice cream cones into each other’s faces). Not willing to settle for a standard biopic, Almereyda tries for ... well ... I'm not sure what he's trying for. The lighting is dim and so is the movie’s overall impact. Put another way, I'd rather have the car or maybe I'll take another look at The Current War (2017), a movie that deals with some of the same characters. Or maybe I'll just move on.

African Violet

        If you’re looking for a film that piles complication on complication, the Iranian import African Violet more than fills the bill. Director Mona Zandi Haghighi tells the story of a family in which conflict begins when Shokoo (Fatemeh Motamed-Aria) travels to a nursing home to retrieve her aging former husband (Reza Babak) and bring him to her home. The twist: Shokoo already has remarried and her current husband (Saeed Aghakhani) isn’t especially happy about having a house guest, particularly because he and Shokoo’s first husband once were best friends. Although African Violet flirts with both sitcom and soap opera, the movie manages to tell a convincing story that touches on issues of mortality, loyalty, obligation, and jealousy. To make a living, Shokoo dyes yarn, which allows Haghighi to add some color but African Violet hardly qualifies as a triumph of style. And because the movie takes place away from Tehran, it has a slightly remote feeling. No matter.  Haghighi's obvious respect and affection for her characters carry the day.  

A look at a Hollywood life

Michael Almereyda, who directed Ethan Hawke in a version of Hamlet set in Manhattan, brings his skills to a documentary about Hampton Fancher. If you just said, "Hampton who?," you're not alone. Fancher isn't exactly a household name, although he's credited as one of the writers of 1982's Blade Runner. Fancher also gets a writing credit for the screenplay for the much anticipated Blade Runner 2049, due this fall. Once an actor, Fancher appeared in a variety of shows during the 1960s: Bonanza, Perry Mason and Gunsmoke among them. Not afraid of the talking-head approach, particularly in his film's latter going, Almereyda concocts a fascinating look at a California life that led Fancher to the movies. Fancher fled home at the age of 16 and traveled to Barcelona to study flamenco. He's been married and unmarried and involved with a variety of women, including actress Barbara Hershey. Fancher is an interesting talker and storyteller, the kind of guy who always sounds like an "insider" no matter how obscure the story he's telling. Sci-fi fans will most appreciate the movie for Fancher's explanation of how he became involved with author Philip K. Dick and later with Blade Runner, which was based on a Dick novella. Almereyda allows Fancher to tell his own story, but often shows us photos from Fancher's past or from TV shows and movies in which the actor appeared. I enjoyed spending time with Fancher in Almereyda's documentary about a man whose life seems possible only in a place where everyone aspires to make movies.

An experiment creates controversy

Experimenter takes a creative look at the work of a psychologist.

At least two experimenters are involved in Experimenter, a movie whose principal events unfold during the 1960s.

Experimenter 1: Psychologist Stanley Milgram, the movie's real-life subject.

In the early 1960s, Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard) conducted a series of controversial experiments at Yale. Dubbed the "obedience experiments," Milgram's work was inspired by his interest in Nazi behavior during World War II.

Milgram designed an experiment that was supposed to determine whether ordinary people could -- through suggestion and rules -- behave sadistically. Would otherwise decent people administer punishment to others -- in the form of electric shocks -- simply because they were told it was part of an apparently legitimate experiment?

Experimenter 2: Director Michael Almereyda

Known to American art-house audiences for directing Ethan Hawke in a modern-day adaptation of Hamlet (2000), Almereyda creates a purposefully abstract environment in which to study Milgram, his experiments and their ethical consequences.

Unafraid to take risks, Almereyda, uses black and white photos as backdrops, obviously artificial sets and other tricky conceits to tip us off to the fact that he's interested in both Milgram and in the human capacity to accept illusion, even when little attempt is made to conceal it.

At a couple of points -- perhaps to make clear that he's blurring the line between the real and imaginary -- Almereyda shows Milgram being followed by an elephant as we walks down a corridor, discussing his experiments.

We speculate about that obvious elephant in the room? Could it be an unacknowledged question: Is Milgram himself acting sadistically?

Milgram, a young Jewish researcher whose parents emigrated from Hungary in advance of the Nazi onslaught, governs himself with dispassion. He observes people under duress, and he's played by Sarsgaard with quiet commitment and a belief in his objective rigor.

Almereyda opens the movie by introducing us to Milgram's signature experiment, one in which no electric shocks actually were given, something the subjects administering the shocks didn't know.

The movie goes on to raise questions that it's never going definitively to answer; i.e., "Is Milgram violating academic ethics by putting subjects under too much stress? And does this artificially created situation really have any equivalency with what happened in Nazi death camps?

Almereyda gives Milgram ample opportunity -- in whispered comments from his diary or in remarks delivered directly to the camera -- to make his conclusions clear: Hideous behavior is situationally determined. Given the right circumstances, most people will submit to an authority that encourages them to behave badly or even sadistically.

Almereyda includes biographical details: We meet Milgram's wife Sasha (Winona Ryder) and follow the course of an academic career that saw Milgram move from Yale to Harvard, where he was denied tenure. He then was hired by City College of New York, where he was awarded a full professorship.

Intellectually challenging and tricky, Experimenter operates on low dramatic voltage. It's a subdued provocation that's designed to throw us off balance by raising fundamental questions about choice: Those made by Milgram, those made by his subjects, and, presumably, those made by us, as well.