The Current War (2018)

The Current War is a historical drama about Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse competing to electrify America. It is a film of waistcoats, patents, and voltage. The cast is white because the historical figures were white, and the production makes no effort at color-conscious casting. There is no LGBTQ subtext and no feminist critique of the era's gender arrangements. Women appear as wives and associates, which is accurate enough for the period and carries no modern argument. The film has no interest in social reform. It has interest in direct current, alternating current, and who gets the contract.

The moral universe here is the patent office and the balance sheet. Edison electrocutes animals to discredit AC, but the film treats this as a public relations stunt, not a parable about corporate greed or animal ethics. Westinghouse wins the bid to light the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, and the victory is framed as a business triumph, not a step toward sustainability. There is no sermon about the rich, no environmental awakening, no body-positivity subplot, and no moment when Tesla's eccentricity is recast as a neurological gift. The electric chair sequence is grim historical anecdote, not a lecture on capital punishment. The film never turns to the audience to explain what to think. It simply shows men in rooms making deals.

The only off-screen cultural marker attached to this production is the Weinstein Company collapse that delayed its release, and that belongs to the film's distribution history, not its text. On screen, The Current War is an old-fashioned prestige picture with good actors and mixed reviews. It is not revisionist history. It is not preachy. It asks whether AC or DC will light the fair, and then it answers. The answer is AC. The film's social consciousness stays at the level of a fuse box. Some will find that refreshing. Others will find it inert. The needle does not move.