Admittedly, I sometimes have a hard time sitting down to watch a biopic. Not that I don’t love to learn about the lives of various interesting people throughout history. I really can’t say what it is. Perhaps more often than not, I want to watch something not based in reality, most likely to escape from my own. But if a biopic is not heavily based in reality, is it really worth watching? Another issue I have is…well let’s face it. Interesting people throughout history usually have sad, difficult lives. It’s either what drives them to become what they are, or is a result of their fame. And I, being a giant crybaby with most media, don’t always feel like having a sob fest. So honestly, Amazon Studio’s latest production, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, already has a few things going against it for me. I’m also ashamed to say, I’ve never even heard of Louis Wain. Not wanting any spoilers about the events of his life right before I watched this film, I didn’t look up anything about him beforehand either.
It turns out that Louis Wain (Benedict Cumberbatch) was a Victorian artist best known for his charming anamorphic cat drawings. The film begins in Wain’s early 20’s when he was an up and coming (if not already highly eccentric) artist supporting his five sisters as the head of his household. When he meets his future wife Emily (Claire Foy) who as employed as a governess for his family, he quickly finds the inspiration for his lifelong favorite subject matter: cats. Unfortunately, highly eccentric may be an understatement for Wain, as his unique worldview was not well accepted during his lifetime. The film was directed by Will Sharpe, a relative newcomer for feature length cinema.
You better believe that as soon as I finished watching this movie, I immediately went to Google Louis Wain to see how accurate this film got it. And while I’m no historian of any sort, it seems from what I’ve read, the film got most of the details about Wain’s life fairly close. I guess that’s the biggest clue that this was a successful biopic: going from knowing nothing about the subject matter before watching it, to actually taking the time to learn more afterwards.
A highly effective tool that my favorite biopics often use is making us, the audience, see the world from the perspective of the subject matter. While this is nothing new or revolutionary at this point, it’s still appreciated, especially for films about people who would be otherwise hard to understand how they think. Without giving too much away, Wain was a man who DEFINITELY needed this approach for film made about him. Because he was an artist, some of the more beautiful moments of his life were represented absolutely gorgeous painting-like scenes. Yet because of his increasingly more questionable state of sanity, there was also a good dose of reality bending, and even somewhat disturbing moments. Even at it’s most disturbing, however, there’s an aesthetically pleasing quality to this picture that I really appreciate. After all, many biopics aren’t exactly colorful or interesting on the eyes.
Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance was once again brilliant, sadly almost predictably so. While I’ve loved him in everything I’ve ever seen him in, he really get’s typecast as the misunderstood, neurodivergent genius at this point. I can at least say, his performance as Wain was certainly different from his other roles of that nature. As nuanced of an actor as he is, however, a the end of the day its no longer anything new or revolutionary to see Cumberbatch like this. The rest of the cast was delightful, from Claire Foy’s quirky performance as Wain’s wife Emily, to his not-so-easy to handle five younger sisters. My Nick Cave inner fangirl screamed a little bit as he also plays a small cameo.
As much as I felt hesitant in watching The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, I’m actually really thankful I did. As always, I’m glad to learn about someone’s life, doubly so if that someone was an artist. But even more than that, it’s refreshing to see a biopic that takes a few risks, and was not only informative, but visually stimulating. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop me from crying like a baby and hugging my cats afterwards, but I guess I can’t have everything.
