The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021)

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain arrives dressed in the familiar costume of the British period biopic, all lamplight and wool coats, and yet its true subject is not cats. It is the interior weather of a man whose mind will not settle. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Wain as a creature of runaway associations, sketching at odd hours, narrating the cosmos to anyone nearby, overwhelmed by sound and color. The film treats this as a difference to be sheltered, not a defect to be scrubbed away, and its closing passages in the institutions of Springfield and Napsbury carry a quiet argument about what a decent society owes its unwell. That argument lands softly. Whimsy does the work that sermonizing usually does.

Where the film glances at commerce, it does so with a raised eyebrow. Louis invents a feline civilization, the postcard trade grows fat on it, and he neglects to copyright a single image, dying in debt while manufacturers count his money. Hearst's patronage is transactional, the family is evicted twice, and the arrangement between artist and industry is shown as a slow extraction. This is a grumble about exploitation, not a manifesto. The romance with Emily Richardson offers a similar restraint. She is ten years his senior, lower born, and unbothered by either fact, and the Wain sisters' cramped Victorian options are acknowledged in passing. The film notices these things without assembling them into a thesis.

Elsewhere the ledger is largely blank. This is a white Victorian family drama and it makes no racial observation of any kind. There is no queer thread, no environmental anxiety, no body-positivity subplot, no reordering of the historical record for ideological convenience. The casting of Adeel Akhtar and Asim Chaudhry registers as incidental texture in a London street scene, nothing more. The result is a tender, occasionally indulgent portrait of an artist whom history remembered chiefly for drawing cats and forgot to pay. The film is kind to him. Kindness, in this instance, is not a political program.

Thematic tags: true_story. The film is based on the real life of Louis Wain, but it is not an Oscar winner, not a sequel or remake, not adapted from a book, not a superhero property, and did not reach number one at the domestic box office given its limited theatrical release and streaming debut.

{"review": "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain arrives dressed in the familiar costume of the British period biopic, all lamplight and wool coats, and yet its true subject is not cats. It is the interior weather of a man whose mind will not settle. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Wain as a creature of runaway associations, sketching at odd hours, narrating the cosmos to anyone nearby, overwhelmed by sound and color. The film treats this as a difference to be sheltered, not a defect to be scrubbed away, and its closing passages in the institutions of Springfield and Napsbury carry a quiet argument about what a decent society owes its unwell. That argument lands softly. Whimsy does the work that sermonizing usually does.\n\nWhere the film glances at commerce, it does so with a raised eyebrow. Louis invents a feline civilization, the postcard trade grows fat on it, and he neglects to copyright a single image, dying in debt while manufacturers count his money. Hearst's patronage is transactional, the family is evicted twice, and the arrangement between artist and industry is shown as a slow extraction. This is a grumble about exploitation, not a manifesto. The romance with Emily Richardson offers a similar restraint. She is ten years his senior, lower born, and unbothered by either fact, and the Wain sisters' cramped Victorian options are acknowledged in passing. The film notices these things without assembling them into a thesis.\n\nElsewhere the ledger is largely blank. This is a white Victorian family drama and it makes no racial observation of any kind. There is no queer thread, no environmental anxiety, no body-positivity subplot, no reordering of the historical record for ideological convenience. The casting of Adeel Akhtar and Asim Chaudhry registers as incidental texture in a London street scene, nothing more. The result is a tender, occasionally indulgent portrait of an artist whom history remembered chiefly for drawing cats and forgot to pay. The film is kind to him. Kindness, in this instance, is not a political program.", "thematic_tags": ["true_story"]}