I watched this movie four times. At my first attempt, I watched Tesla in three parts. Director Michael Almereyda’s experimental documentary style felt random to me: his blue and pink neon-lit scenes with their 2D-like backgrounds appeared like some online video game. Even juxtaposed with the sooted metal of an industrial age, the colors lacked emotive function. The characters? Never any real drama, save for Ethan Hawke’s rendition of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” at the film’s end.

On my second and third attempts at understanding the film, I began to see some of the bigger picture: the director was re-presenting, re-positioning Tesla as the forgotten, sad-mad genius of his age. That makes sense. That feels right and expected, considering that Tesla’s systems of alternating current still drive energy distribution today. Like, globally!

I recall thinking by my fourth viewing, that, if Tesla was big on previsualization of an idea in total, his storyteller certainly is not.

My favorite bits? When Tesla describes his new wireless experiments as tasks akin to “getting the ocean to sit for a portrait.” (Which meant sitting still for minutes!) And when performer Sarah Bernhardt says something like, “By spending myself, I become rich.”