How the Edison, Westinghouse tiff electrified Toronto film fest
Oscar nominees Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Shannon electrified audiences at the Toronto film festival on Sunday with their portrayals of Thomas Edison and his rival in the race for marketable electricity, George Westinghouse.
The Current War was directed by Alfonso GomezRejon, who described Edison as someone “who came from a world of spontaneous invention without really seeing the purpose for it at first, and created a purpose for something.”
In contrast, he said, “Westinghouse could immediately contextualise something and see how it could be greater for society.”
“The rivalry between them was interesting,” Gomez-Rejon said, because of “what it said about the world and how we can, through invention and technology, leave it better than how we found it.”
The movie also stars Nicholas Hoult as inventor and futurist Nikola Tesla.
Cumberbatch said he knew very little about Edison be- fore taking on the role.
“I really was in the dark,” he quipped. Various Edison biographies, he noted, offer a “varied understanding and appreciation of the man.”
Cumberbatch’s own interpretation of him, he said, is that of “a man who had achieved a great deal from humble beginnings, who felt assailed in the world. I don’t think that ever left him.”
To prepare for the role,
Cumberbatch read Edison’s diary in which the inventor talked about his dreams, “his diet and bowel movements, or lack thereof,” literature, “his fantasy world” and how he once “got into a mess in New
York because he asked a tram conductor on which stop to get off at and he couldn’t hear him.”
Edison had suffered from partial hearing loss since childhood.