Sherry McGuire
I saw this film at the Crest theater and was blown away. It's the most detailed documentary I've ever seen on Tesla and centers around his work on Long Island where he built a tower to give free power to the entire earth. The filmmakers show the science in layman's terms and tell the story of how J.P Morgan sabotaged Tesla's humanitarian endeavors. It is absolutely heartbreaking to see the exchange back in forth between the two through a painful series of letters beautifully executed by the director. When the tower was destroyed, the people in front of me were crying and i teared up too. But what happened next was amazing. Instead of ending in tragedy, the film follows a non-profit's journey to save the property where the lab stood. After many struggles themselves they are able to save it through a crowd funding campaign as a permanent tribute to Nikola Tesla. And I teared up again! It really is a fantastic, thought provoking and inspirational movie with some of the best graphics I've ever seen in a documentary. It even disputes many of the myths surrounding Tesla in a humorous, tension- breaking way. I really loved this film and its beautiful, poetic flow of story telling. It's by far the best documentary I've seen in many years.
sara-sadri
I couldn't wait to watch this film. I love Nikola Tesla and I do believe that history didn't pay him the attention he deserved as a thinker and innovator. The film, however, was a totally different story. While I think the first hour of the movie was bearable, I found watching it beyond an hour absolutely painful. The movie deviated from trying to talk about Tesla's life and work, to how the film crew and "Oatmeal" managed to crowd fund the site Tesla once had as a lab. It was very off-topic. In addition to that, the film falls short in showing a human side of N. Tesla. An actor who resembled mostly Charlie Chaplin was shown several times, in the same footage, as Tesla. The film also falls short in describing the science in a concise and thorough way. Instead the film includes dozens of long quotes from Faust, leaving the audience to read those in the middle of the film, which are so tenuously related. The negative characters had very bad voice-overs!!! The science representation of the film was terrible. They could just take two minutes to explain to the audience what was exactly alternating current good for, what was at stake, and why? The interviewees are all very identical to each other, and the camera is extremely close to them. I am very sorry that Tesla's film turned out like that. I am sure the filmmakers meant well.
Cory Fitzgerald
I have taught and studied Tesla for almost 15 years and I walked away from this documentary with information I had never known before. The documentary gave a fascinating account of the interactions between Nikola Tesla and JP Morgan. I loved the light-heartedness of some of the interviews, while still delivering a very clear depiction of who Nikola Tesla was. The images and animations throughout the documentary are far superior to any other Tesla documentary I have viewed. The information was delivered in a very clear, concise manner. I can easily see this film being a solid foundation for a Nikola Tesla curriculum that is currently being developed for schools by the Tesla Science Foundation.Joseph Sikorski does an amazing job bringing light to Tesla's Wardenclyffe laboratory. He details how it was designed, how it operated, why it failed, and finally how it was saved and is being revitalized into a museum.If you are a fan of Nikola Tesla, this is a must watch documentary.
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