Mark Reviews Movies: THE ELECTRICAL LIFE OF LOUIS WAIN

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 21, 2021

The form and goals of a movie biography aren't necessarily different simply because the subject is unique. That's one lesson of The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, a pretty traditional telling of the eponymous artist's life story. The man himself is certainly eccentric, believing himself a misunderstood genius of every field in which he dabbles (of which there are many) and that electricity exists within the world as a mystical, supernatural force. At one point, the man becomes certain that the hidden electrical currents in the air could be manipulated to travel through time. It is for the best, perhaps, that he starts drawing cats, instead of trying to work on that theory.

This is the story of an artist who became quite famous in the late 1800s and early 1900s for his cat drawings, changing the contemporary public's perception of an animal that was seen primarily as a utility—for catching mice—or a creature of the street. Such a cultural shift is notable to some degree, but whatever influence Wain and his cartoon-ish sketches of anthropomorphic felines may have had in that regard feels like a piece of trivial knowledge at best.

That's the main challenge of Simon Stephenson and director Will Sharpe's screenplay: to make Wain, his drawings, his career, and his personal struggles into a story with some kind of real significance. The movie, devoted to and trapped by the routine form and decades-spanning narrative scheme of a biography, never quite figures out what that significance is or even could be.

Tonally, Sharpe does attempt to be a bit playful with Wain's story—up to a certain point. A dryly cheeky narrator (voiced by Olivia Colman) offers some deadpan sarcasm in explaining the early career and personal life of our protagonist. As played by Benedict Cumberbatch, Louis is the de facto man of the house, having to provide financially for his sickly mother and five younger sister following the death of the family's patriarch.

A self-proclaimed "poly-hobbyist," he dreams of doing a lot, such as composing an opera and experimenting with electricity. The narrator, though, mostly sums up Louis as a "failed" teacher and a man whose only steady income arrives from his sketching for an illustrated newspaper.

William Ingram (Toby Jones), the paper's owner, offers Louis a full-time job, but he only takes it upon realizing the pay will be the only way to keep Emily (Claire Foy), the governess for the youngest sisters, employed. He quickly comes to fancy the woman, despite their differences in social status and the disapproval of eldest sister Caroline (Andrea Riseborough.

After brief marital bliss is interrupted by a terminal diagnosis, the rest of the story becomes far gloomier, in spite and because of Louis' fanciful and increasing obsession with cats (He and Emily keep a stray kitten as a pet, which initially inspires him to start drawing felines), and more constrained (matching Sharpe and cinematographer Erik Wilson's choice to frame this tale within a boxy aspect ratio). The smaller details, such as the awkward way in which the central romance blooms and the narrator's biting commentary about society at the time, give way to far broader ones.

Time passes quickly, as years move by in a flash, and a few pages of cat cartoons, published by William in a Christmas edition of the paper, turn into a national sensation. Louis finds fame and immediate success, but he is ill-prepared for the particulars of ensuring that his art can earn him the fortune it seems capable of generating.

Failure upon failure, tragedy upon tragedy, and uncertainty after uncertainty happen to Louis and his family. While the movie possesses a certain honesty in the way the man dives into his work to keep grief at bay, the story itself simply feels like one misfortune waiting for or begetting the next.

Cumberbatch plays the man, whose apparently declining mental health has since become a matter of debate (Sharpe and Stephenson play it as a historical and psychological fact here), with some stumbling and bumbling charm, which leads to a certain level of pathos as Louis becomes increasingly stuck within himself and the world as he imagines it (Out-of-focus subjective shots eventually show us Louis imagining people as cats in everyday situations). If the whole narrative trajectory seems a bit fatalistic in its sense of inevitability, that's likely because Louis is framed mostly as an eccentric and, later, tragic product of everything that happens to him.

The movie, then, becomes less about the man and more about the bigger details of his life—his art, his early ambitions, his sudden success, his long but unstoppable financial and mental decline. The Electrical Life of Louis Wain doesn't quite know what to make of or say about its subject beyond his broadly eccentric nature and ironically dreadful circumstances of a life dedicated to work that made so many happy.

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