Film Review: THE ELECTRICAL LIFE OF LOUIS WAIN (2021): A Picturesque Biopic of a Unique Man & Inventive Artist

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain Review

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021) Film Review, a movie directed by Will Sharpe, and starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Claire Foy, Andrea Riseborough, Toby Jones, Sharon Rooney, Aimee Lou Wood, Hayley Squires, Stacy Martin, Phoebe Nicholls, Adeel Akhtar, Asim Chaudhry, Taika Waititi, Crystal Clarke, Daniel Rigby, Richard Ayoade, Julian Barratt, Dorothy Atkinson, Nick Cave, and Olivia Colman.

Director Will Sharpe plunges the viewer into a lively portrayal of Louis Wain’s life as a young man of 21, shouldering his way through a crowded train car in The Electrical Life of Louis Wain.

In fact, most of the frames burst forth with vitality. Louis shares a raucous home with his mother and four sisters. But Louis is bad at laying down the law as head of household, and he seems to take being run over roughshod with cheerful, aloof resignation. Even the brow-beatings from his oldest sister, Caroline, echoes a modern sit-com.

Wain’s notoriety lies mostly in the realm of the psychological rather than artistic. His work has been branded as a classical example of schizophrenia, but this has recently been disputed in favor of Autistic Spectrum Disorder (toxoplasmosis has also been suggested). Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Wain implies ASD; Louis’ movements are stiff and mechanical; his manner is blunt, abrupt, and literal, and with an eidetic memory to boot. But Sharp and his co-writer, Simon Stephenson, present these in lighthearted terms — the quirks of an artist — at least at first.

The story does not linger over this very long. The bulk of the remaining story focuses mainly on Wain’s roller-coaster ride of a career, cultural contribution to Victorian England, and most especially his courtship and marriage to the governess, Emily, played by Claire Foy. The film has an odd continuity, but works, like a stone skipped over the surface of a lake, each bounce a slice of the artist’s life, then onto the next, presented almost as vignettes.

The strongest emotional thread belongs, not surprisingly, to the connubial bliss between Louis and Emily. She presents clearly as a match for Wain from her first day as governess. The dubious courtship starts awkwardly, and one gets the idea, and by way of Andrea Riseborough’s Caroline — and a very loud one, too — that this defies Victorian convention: you just don’t marry ‘the help.’ But for once Louis puts his foot down, and the wedded couple moves into their own country home.

The filmmakers took their time in crafting the tenderest scenes between husband and wife. And there wasn’t a lot of time to be had, as three years after the vows were spoken Emily was diagnosed with breast cancer. With the exception of one scene, the couple soldiered on as cheerfully as they had begun until Emily’s demise. Louis finds comfort, as Emily did, in the stray turned family: their beloved cat, Peter, the original model for the anthropomorphized feline etchings that launched Louis’ celebrity. This was managed without undue sentimentality.

The evidence for Louis’ precarious finances is given in scenes of clutter, a messy kitchen, and disheveled clothing. There came lots of scolding from family, but no bailiffs came pounding on the door. Instead, much more footage is devoted to his successes, which are remarkable footnotes in themselves. Who could have guessed that drawings of whimsical cats — incidentally reversing prevailing prejudice against felines, particularly as pets — would also be his special triumphs?

Here and there was some exposition that don’t seem grounded. For example, a nine or ten-year-old Louis experiences night terrors about being on a sinking ship in a storm and being drowned. No explanation is offered for this recurring childhood nightmare. It is instrumental, however, as the basis of Wain’s hallucination aboard a ship on rough seas when returning to England; technically, a remarkable, frightening scene, and that’s the last one sees of it.

Cinematographer Erik Wilson alternates family fracas, quiet domesticity, and frightening tunnel-vision images in equal, precise measure. He fills the frames with reasonable interpretations of Wain’s reveries. Springtime meadows morphing into storybook illustrations, storm cloud auroras punctuated by graceful arcs of slo-mo lightning bolts are among the most impressive, but all linger in the memory.

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain could be considered an illustrated life of a unique artist, a beautiful coffee-table book of a film. While not a penetrating biopic, the movie nonetheless highlights Wain’s achievements and pays proper homage to an intriguing man and speculates on his much debated bent of mind without clinical overreach. In addition to the very fine performances all around, standouts include Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrea Riseborough, Claire Foy, Toby Jones, again triumphant, as Wain’s employer and benefactor, Sir William Ingram, and Olivia Colman as the Narrator.

Rating: 8/10

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