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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/movies/the-electrical-life-of-louis-wain-review.html
‘The Electrical Life of Louis Wain’ Review: The
Cat’s Meow
Benedict Cumberbatch plays a British artist who found
love, both human and feline, and became famous as the man who drew cats.
By Manohla
Dargis
Oct. 21,
2021
Claire Foy
and Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Electrical Life of Louis Wain,” directed by
Will Sharpe.
“Why cats?”
This innocent question arrives midway through “The Electrical Life of Louis
Wain,” hovering over it like a mischievous smile. For some of us, of course,
the only answer to this query can be: “Why not?” The answer was far more
complicated for the real Wain, a British artist who in the 1880s became
well-known for his distinctive, playful drawings of cats; his fame helped
deepen a national appreciation for the Felis catus.
Wain’s work
is easily found online, and while you may recognize it, the man remains more
elusive. The modesty, ubiquity and naïveté of his art played a role. The
drawings were mass produced, for starters, first appearing in newspapers that
were probably soon used to wrap fish and chips (or torn into bits for the
privy). They were also widely circulated on postcards, greeting cards,
children’s books and other ephemera. But because he didn’t copyright most of
his work, everyone owned it. The images were commodities of the humblest, most
populist sort, not rarefied art-market fetishes.
“The
Electrical Life,” a poignant biographical portrait starring an irresistible
Benedict Cumberbatch, helps bring the man into focus, even if it is all a bit
fuzzy. It’s tethered by a garrulous, lightly funny script by Simon Stephenson
and the director, Will Sharpe, who’s taken on the material with both kindness
and an elastic, mildly frisky approach toward the medium. In its biopic sweep,
the movie is conventional, with a not-quite-cradle to not-quite-grave
trajectory that allows Cumberbatch to inhabit the character across time, as
Louis (pronounced Louie) matures, falls in love, finds fame and endures a
series of crushing blows all while creating his magical, mystical cats.
Perhaps you
are anxious to know more; maybe you are already gagging and not on a hairball.
Despite their strange yet understandable YouTube eminence, cats are not for
everyone, regrettably, and probably neither is “The Electrical Life.” It
doesn’t help that the first few scenes jump around in time — it opens with an
aged Louis and then shifts to his past, a tiresome framing device — and have
the fussy, fluttering energy of a host who’s worried her party will be a bust.
There’s a monochromatic funeral, a wash of dingy color and figures moving in
slow-motion, and then, bam, Louis is racing around his clamorous London home
alongside his mother and five unmarried sisters.
The
opening’s quick-sketch bursts efficiently lay out the coordinates of Louis’s
life: the dead father, the household of women and the difficulties to come. All
this quasi-Dickensian bustling also has a stealthy, productively destabilizing
function, partly because the slight freneticism (falsely) suggests a lack of
directorial control. Soon enough Louis and the movie do get down to biopic
business, nudged along by the soothing voice of its unseen narrator, Olivia
Colman. And while the energy remains high and the pace brisk throughout, it
becomes increasingly, painfully clear that the gentle chaos swirls through the
early scenes because it’s swirling through Louis’s poor head.
For the
most part, Sharpe gets into that head through action rather than mere
explanation, by showing you Louis’s world and his great loves, both human and
feline. There’s a lot of chatter, some of it delivered at near-breathless
screwball (or dueling rapper) speed. The quick rhythms of the gratifyingly
enunciated dialogue set the mood and the tone, and convey the everyday tumult
both in Louis’s home and in his pinging, whirring mind. A polymath, he earns
money drawing freelance illustrations for newspapers, but he’s also writing an
opera, taking boxing lessons and studying electricity, a passionate habit that
takes on mounting metaphoric resonance.
Louis and
the story settle into a sweet groove when he meets Emily (the perfectly cast
Claire Foy), who’s hired as a governess for his sisters. Their class
differences make their romance a scandal for snoops and for Louis’s sister,
Caroline (the equally well-cast Andrea Riseborough), a sweet-and-sour presence
who has assumed the role of the family’s stern hand. Caroline fires Emily;
Louis weds her. Cushioned by the steady if modest income now provided by an
indulgent newspaper editor and unexpected cat fancier (Toby Jones), Louis and
Emily move to the countryside, where they set up house in a cottage. It’s as
lovely and sad as life, and then one day, they hear a faint mewling.
Emily profoundly
changes Louis’s life, giving it purpose and meaning; the mewling stray, whom
they name Peter, gives Louis a way to express that meaning and purpose. When
Emily falls ill, Louis begins drawing Peter the Great (as he’s soon called) to
distract her and lighten the fast-darkening mood. Drawn with quick, free
gestures — the movie shows Louis sketching using both hands at once — these
initial pictures are very true to life and classically realized with familiar
shapes, dimensions, textures, whiskers and eyes. The images are sensitive,
charming, and they convey the feelings that he can’t always put into words.
Louis’s cats look like cats, until they don’t.
Over time,
as Louis’s life takes a number of dramatic turns, his cat love deepens and his
art changes, and so do both the movie and Cumberbatch’s layered performance,
with its openness, tenderness and performative control. Louis is a funny,
complicated character, and while the movie could have expanded its horizons
(particularly in view of the changes roiling the art world), Cumberbatch fills
in this expressionistic portrait exquisitely. Together he and Sharpe make it
clear that while Wain became famous for his anthropomorphic drawings of cats,
he was — with each feathery and bold stroke, with every wild smile and rounded
eye shining with tears or lit by a strange fire — also drawing an indelible,
kaleidoscopic and finally mysteriously, deeply human self-portrait.
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DirectorWill
Sharpe
Writers Simon
Stephenson, Will Sharpe
Stars Norbury
Ackland, Dorothy Atkinson, Richard Ayoade, Amber Victoria Bray, Asim Chaudhry
RatingPG-13
Running
Time1h 51m
Genres Biography,
Drama, History
Movie data
powered by IMDb.com
Manohla
Dargis has been the co-chief film critic since 2004. She started writing about
movies professionally in 1987 while earning her M.A. in cinema studies at New
York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books.
1 comment:
I truly enjoyed this movie!
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