TIFF 2021 THE ELECTRICAL LIFE OF LOUIS WAIN: Reflections by Carol Borden

 

By Carol Borden 

Will Sharpe The Electrical Life Of Louis Wain (UK, 2021)
 

Among other things, Louis Wain was an artist whose work spanned the1880s through the 1920s. In his lifetime, Louis Wain was most renowned for his drawings of cats--especially his charming and often satirical drawings of cats doing human things. (You can see a brief clip of Wain drawing a cat in a 1921 British Pathé short on YouTube). Wain began working for illustrated papers in London, depicting mostly animals at country fairs and, well, wherever other animals might appear in the news. He was the eldest of six siblings and the only male child. When his father passed away, Wain became responsible for supporting his mother and sisters. He was not suited for this task. He was eccentric and, according to the film, experienced delusions and hallucinations that became progressively more intrusive as he got older. For his part, Benedict Cumberbatch seems to have chosen to play Wain as being on the autism spectrum. Regardless of its source, the way Wain experienced and interacted with the world led to a remarkable output of art that he could not, unfortunately, benefit from because it did not occur to him to copyright it.

The Electrical Life of Lous Wain begins just as Louis is doing reasonably well but realizes he might need to bring in a more steady income after his sister Caroline (Andrea Riseborough)  hires Miss Emily Richardson (Claire Foy) as a governess for his youngest sisters. Louis is unhappy at first because the necessity of taking a steady position as a staff illustrator at Sir William Ingram’s (Toby Jones) paper interferes with his ability to pursue his other interests, especially his electrical research. But Louis resigns himself to her presence. Ultimately, he falls in love and marries Emily. Emily and Louis take in a cat, Peter. And thus Louis begins drawing cats.

The film uses a variety of charming visual techniques to draw us into Wain’s life and world. It focuses on his art and his particular method of drawing and painting. I particularly like a scene where the camera looks through a design Cumberbatch paints on glass.

I also enjoyed the segments with subtitled cats and the presence of so many amazing cats in the film. The scenes that morphed into stills recalling hand-painted photographs were a nice touch, too. I loved the design--all the prints and colors in the costuming and especially on the walls of Wain’s rooms. Taika Waiti has a nice cameo where his American accent makes him sound like Alan Cumming, at least to me. I feel like these visual elements were the strongest part of the film. The title cards at the end of the film were delightful and it’s too bad that they were not the title cards at the beginning of the film. I assume they were intended to be, but there were notes.

I wish The Electrical Life of Louis Wain had about 15% more whimsy. Just leaned into Wain’s world a little more. This could be a side effect of just having watched Neptune Frost which went hard for what it was going for. Neptune Frost does not give a fuck about what cinema is supposed to be. It’s got its business to take care of. And so my critical faculties might be distorted. The Electrical Life of Louis Wain is tremendously whimsical for a more mainstream film. And I recognize the dangers of whimsy in film. I don’t think you’d want to go full Wes Anderson or Tim Burton with a film about Louis Wain, or at least with this particular screenplay about Louis Wain. Although I can see a pretty good Wain film from either filmmaker. In fact this might make an interesting pairing with Burton’s Big Eyes (2014).

But this is a biopic very much interested in letting us know about the life of Louis Wain, actual human being who had a rough time, rather than Louis Wain, eccentric character. It’s a hard balance because I can see what Sharpe finds so inspiring about Wain and his desire for the audience to feel inspired at the same time that I feel so sad for Louis Wain, a man who could not fulfill the expectations of his time, who felt a profound calling to make the world a better place,  and who experienced mental illness in terrible conditions.