If there’s a defining trait to the classic British romance, it’s not the impact of a stiff upper lip on kissing. It’s awkwardness, and few actors can summon that conflict between awkwardness and trembling yearning than Benedict Cumberbatch. It’s not a trait he’s often been allowed to display, between detective work and superheroics, but it’s delightfully and tragically displayed in service of one of his other strong suits: historical biopics.
This combination flowers delicately in The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, a warm and moving recounting of the man who arguably invented the modern idea of the cat. Not, of course, that cats did not exist before the Wain’s anthropomorphic felines were first featured in the 1886 Christmas issue of the Illustrated London News. But his art, which began as comedic whimsy before evolving into what now would be recognized as proto-surrealism, presaged the modern era of cat knickknacks, and the idea that they have an inner life much like our own.
But what a tempestuous inner life Louis Wain had. The son of a somewhat wealthy family, he became an illustrator of adorable and strange pictures of cats. Yet those cat pictures came out of the death of his wife, Emily (Foy), who was just as awkward as him. Her age and lower social status made their marriage was bit of a scandal, as well as causing friction with Wain’s five sisters. However, it’s delightfully laid out, even if it is a stretch to see Cumberbatch as 10 years younger than Foy, rather than the actual near-decade older.
Cumberbatch’s resemblance to the actual Wain is undeniable, as well as his willingness to throw himself into his tragedies, and he catches the constant pain after the loss of something so ephemeral as first and only love. He’s an actor of details, such as how Louis tries to light a morning fire – a mundane act that is heartbreaking. Idiosyncratic as Louis is, and increasingly detached from reality and society, he’s never a pastiche. In his grief, talent, and increasingly erratic behavior, he is given both succor and support from publisher Sir William Ingram (Jones, in a surprisingly tender turn) – often his sole male acquaintance in a household of women.
It’s that tenderness that defines The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, and director Will Sharpe (who co-authored the script with Luca writer Simon Stephenson) captures how the turn of the 20th century allowed for eccentric theories that could mask madness. Wain’s psychosis is shown from the inside, the Victoriana giving way to psychotronic visions that re-create Wain’s futurism and dalliances with Cubism. There’s an adventurism within the constraints of the historical biopic that puts Wain and this film alongside both fellow current enthusiast Nikola Tesla and Michael Almereyda’s underseen 2020 eponymous biopic starring Ethan Hawke as the inventor. Both are tragic, but both are worthy tributes to eccentrics who helped shape our world. Even if it’s just through funny cat pictures.
Available from Nov. 5 on Amazon Prime.
This article appears in November 5 • 2021.
