3 Stars — Thoughtful
It is hard to imagine that for someone of my grandfather’s generation, they could remember a time before their home had electric lights. We take it for granted that the world as we know it is interconnected and artificially lit up. It is hard to realize that the invention of the electrical system and the light bulb were novel ideas just a few decades ago.
The Current War brings us back to the fertile time of invention in the 1880s when life was changing dramatically from its rural state to one of modern technology and interconnected life. Within a 10-year period, people were traveling by railroads across the country when their own parents and grandparents had never left the county in which they were born. The light bulb, the phonograph, the motion picture, electric machines, and the telephone entered the culture and changed it forever.
While we were all taught in school about how Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, most of us are unaware of the trials and tribulations that come along with the birthing process. The Current War gives us a glimpse into the ambitions, fears, and character traits of three of the greatest contributors to the lighting up of the world: Edison, George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla (portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon and Nicholas Hoult).
There is no question from our vantage point that Edison was the most famous of the three. Westinghouse may be more popularly remembered because his name is on a lot of household appliances, and certainly there are many people driving around in electric cars today named after Tesla. The fact remains, though, that all three created the modern world in which we live.
The historical facts in The Current War are basically accurate. Edison did become famous for inventing the light bulb as we know it, and he licensed his patents to numerous companies that still bear his name in their corporate structure such as Southern California Edison or Detroit Edison. Westinghouse became the winner of the war on electrical distribution. While Edison wanted to operate with direct current (DC), Westinghouse and Tesla were convinced that alternating current (AC) could transfer electricity across great distances and tie the country together in an electrical grid at a fraction of the cost. Edison eventually had to concede that they were right.
Tesla worked first for Edison, and then for Westinghouse, but his business sense was poor and didn’t match his engineering brilliance. His contribution was most notably to figure out how to make machines work effectively using alternating current. In the end, he died a poor man, even though his inventions rivaled that of his peers. Every electrical machine from trains to air conditioners work today off of his legacy.
What we do see, even though it is mostly conjecture, is the character of these men of invention. Edison was a proud man who needed to know that people respected him for what he had done. His lack of social and business skill resulted in his loss of control of his enterprise. Once his investors took over the company (which became General Electric), he retained a seat on the GE board and became the voice and image of the company.
Westinghouse is portrayed as a man of deep integrity with a strong understanding of how this collective enterprise would make them all wealthy. He sought to combine all of their interests together, but the blending together of these three brilliant minds and egos was not to happen. His tremendous skill in business was always living in the shadow of Edison’s fame.
In the end, these were three boys who grew into men at just the right time in history, not dissimilar to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in the 1980s. Their ability to succeed was driven partly by ambition, but equally by lessons of honesty and integrity passed down to them by parents and close associates.
During the 140 years of time between Edison’s invention of the light bulb to today’s flying to the space station or communicating with a smartphone across continents, the technical transformation of our world has been profound, and it changes all of us at such an unprecedented rate we can hardly measure it. The only thing that has not changed is the inner life of all of us, and whether we are driven with integrity or by ego and raw ambition.
Discussion
» The radical shift in global culture made possible by electricity could have brought us into one global family. Why do you think this has not occurred?
» The contrast of these three men helps us understand what stands in the way of cooperative business ventures. Do you see any solutions?
» Which of these three inventors do you think most impacted our world? Why do you answer as you do?
— Cinema in Focus is a social and spiritual movie commentary. Hal Conklin is a former mayor of Santa Barbara and Denny Wayman is the retired pastor of Free Methodist Church of Santa Barbara and lead superintendent of Free Methodist Church in Southern California. For more reviews, visit www.cinemainfocus.com, or follow them on Twitter: @CinemaInFocus. The opinions expressed are their own.