Make The Electrical Life of Louis Wain Your New Religion
As we approach the end of yet another stressful and turbulent year, mired in a never-ending resurgence of dread and mental dissociation, I've got one word for you: electricity.
Wait, don't go!
Let me sweeten the deal: cats.
No, no – wait!!
I don't mean electrocute the cats, I mean electrical cats!
Yeah that's right, give it a minute. Let it simmer. Let it flow through your mind, arouse your neurons, titillate your synapses. I have a brand new religion for you and it turns out the bulk of its main text can be found within an Amazon streaming movie. Well, it's a bit more than that, but we'll get there.
Will Sharpe's The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021) is a welcome forerunner in the club of non-formulaic biopics that have popped up in the last few years. Michael Almereyda’s Tesla and Matthew Rankin's The Twentieth Century immediately come to mind, though Sharpe more structured storytelling and straightforward visuals never fully steps up to the level of surreality in the previous two or, say, its subject’s art. I won't blame you for mistakenly dismissing this as formulaic, the familiar pieces are certainly all there, and if you come to this film presuming it’s just about a whimsical oddball then I doubt you’ll be watching closely enough to pick up on its deeper emotional and spiritual undercurrents. One is not necessarily born with the inherent ability to see God, you know.
Okay, no really, hang in there, I’ll explain myself…
First there's our subject: an eccentric Victorian-era artist, Louis Wain (Benedict Cumberbatch), whose life seemed to only exist in the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. After the death of his textile-merchant father, Louis found himself in charge of supporting his mother, five younger sisters and their middle-class lifestyle. As if things couldn't get more difficult, Wain was also an artist. He tried his hand at everything from unconventional operas to outlandish inventions but, like many who've come before and will come after, it was his side gig as an illustrator that managed to make him any money. He landed a lucky break, a full time illustrating position with the London News, which later became the platform that launched his wildly successful career as an illustrator of cats. Little cat tableaus with cats doing normal human things on two legs but as cats. Having tea parties and pillow fights and playing cards; whichever image you conjure in your mind when I say the words "turn of the century cat illustration" is most likely a Louis Wain illustration or was riding on the coattails of his success.
This thing with cats was inspired by his marriage to his sisters' governess, Emily Richardson (Claire Foy), who adopted a stray cat named Peter into their home and opened Louis’ eyes to the joys of a nice warm cat. While their marriage was a happy one, it wasn’t without drama. Beyond being practically as penniless as them, Emily was also considered a highly scandalous match due to her being ten years his senior, the sort of thing that gets around town and ruins a man’s good name. It’s here that the highs slide back to the lows – Emily sadly died from breast cancer a mere three years after their marriage, which began a downward spiral of grief piled upon grief in Louis’ life, eventually leading to not only his own mental decline but the ruin of his entire family. He died in relative obscurity at a mental institution and his work had been largely forgotten in the decades that have followed.
Written out it sounds like a horrendously depressing melodrama, and yet in the spirit of Wain’s otherworldly artwork, Sharpe’s film never manages to lose its sense of humor and wonder. There’s some genuinely excellent world building happening in The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, the likes of which tends to get ignored in most biopics for hyper-focus on its titular character. The steady decline of Wain’s childhood household, initially bursting with his sister’s boisterous personalities and all the promises of potential that come with youth, is one of the more surprisingly gripping arcs. As is the film’s depiction of an untrustworthy New York City, full of overwhelming cat conventions and culturally alien masses, that Wain discovers in search of money to support his sisters. This ever-present love of his wife and his family is infused throughout the core structure and humor of the film itself, never allowing our titular hero to feel too alienating – even when he’s drifting further and further into the recesses of his mind.
Benedict Cumberbatch rarely dips into caricature, grounding Louis’ core character in his sense of focus and good-natured sincerity. We witness Louis going on about his unique beliefs in the power of electricity at length with the intensity of a genius mathematician trying to catch the rest of the world up to what he clearly sees as obvious. Cumberbatch never allows Louis to actually become the raving fool those around him clearly perceive him to be. Claire Foy also makes for an incredibly well-rounded love interest, an otherwise almost unknown woman brought to life with Foy’s own injection of practicality and a more closely guarded love of the fantastical – an excellent match for Louis’ bluntly unchecked earnestness. The film’s brilliant casting choices extends all the way to its cameos; I was positively delighted to see comedian Julian Barratt as the local doctor and musician Nick Cave appearing as H.G. Welles, not to mention Richard Ayoade and Taika Waititi’s memorable 30-second walk ons.
The filmmaking itself is also truly outstanding, with a dreamy and fluid camerawork that goes above and beyond what you’d expect from typical stuffy period pieces or drab biopics. Cinematographer Erik Wilson brings the same playfulness that he employed in Richard Ayoade’s The Double and Submarine to this film – using an inspired mix of stylized, practical lens effects from fish-eyed fantasy moments, prismatic flares and purposeful use of breathing in order to build a sense of interconnectedness throughout everybody and everything in the film. Topped off with just the right about of CGI to hyper-saturate us into a fugue-like state when the script deems it necessary. All of this is then sewed up tightly with the film’s dazzling theremin and musical saw-backed soundtrack that rings hypnotically between the bizarre and the beautiful.
Will Sharpe uses every aspect of this film to reinforce the main thematic focus here on connectivity and love. Even stronger in that it never dips into the overtly sentimental, allowing itself to get as dark as it needs to be but always trying to right the ship with the sort of unshakable optimism cats and electricity will provide to you. It makes for an engaging and downright brilliant character study, a vivid cinematic mirror of its titular character’s struggle with fantasy and reality. It’s profoundly depressing in parts – this is a tale of highs and lows after all, and Wain’s gentle sense of humor and wonder comes paired with manic depressiveness episodes and crippling anxiety nightmares. As much as this film focuses on the glory of beauty and creativity, it’s equally a meditation on the oppressive weight of grief and guilt; a stark reminder than love can not conquer all when smothered under the weight of society’s disinterest in your basic needs once you fall below a certain economic level.
After the death of his wife, the Narrator (infused with memorable wit by Olivia Colman) makes a point to say that Louis found great inspiration in his misery, using this time to obsessively build his wildly popular, though never lucrative, career in cat illustrations. But our Narrator injects too much personal commentary throughout the film to be fully reliable, and it becomes clear as the film goes on and Louis’ loves continue to die around him, that grief was what drove him further and further from reality – forward to the dead-end ruin of mentally surrendering himself to full avoidance. Conversely, his ability to tap into that dreamworld of cats, electrical body suits, prismatic light and floral wallpaper mazes was really the only constant joy he had throughout his life, in good times and bad. This world of art he’s presumed lost to is the same guide that eventually helps to lead him back to stability.
So here’s where the new world order religion I’m starting comes in, because The Electrical Life of Louis Wain directly taps into something that I’ve already long considered akin to God or magic or enlightenment or inspiration or nirvana or whatever damn word you want to call it since it’s all the same thing in the end. Before she succumbs to cancer, Emily assuages Louis’ fear of a world without her by telling him: “I don't make the world beautiful, Louis. The world is beautiful. And you've helped me to see that too.” It’s the sort of line that boils down the centuries of religious debate and spiritual longing to a digestible bite-sized thought – a sentiment as heartbreaking as it is encouraging, serving to both remind us of and break free from the prisons our own minds. It ties together all of Louis’ pain with his art, highlights his inability to rectify the overwhelming pressures of reality with all of the beauty it has to offer. In her absence, it forces him to turn to what he can make sense of, the original love of his life joined together with the love that he found with her. Electricity and cats.
While those around him dismiss these artistic pursuits are pure frivolity, the way that Louis’ artwork was able to connect to so many people so deeply, ushering in a period of feline-based fanaticism and joy, is hard cold proof of there being something deeper to his work than initially meets the eye. Pairing quasi-scientific understandings of electricity with cute lil’ fluffy cats is nothing short of pure magic. It’s the eternal struggle of life at play, a way to observe the ridiculousness of our own lives and customs through a whiskered likeness. Whether you dismiss it or not, it’s a universal truth Louis Wain tapped into – a cyclical one that we’ve seen a recent resurgence, perpetuated even a hundred years later, through the internet’s obsession with cat memes.
The Electrical Life of Lous Wain conjures the same sort of exhilaration that documentaries Jodorowsky’s Dune and Beauty is Embarrassing bring their viewers; the wildly ecstatic high of one man’s vision striking those around him like a lightning bolt, leaving the permanent marks of what was and will always remain a vivid human connection in proof of art. There’s really no difference between Louis Wain’s ramblings about the positive qualities of electricity and the concept of spiritual visualization but semantics. As the film says, cats are like us, as are all animals, and we are all as one. And it’s through connection that we find meaning, even if it’s merely through an ecstatic feeling of joy upon observing beauty. What else do you call that spark of life, of knowing and recognized love between two beings, other than electricity?
All hail Louis Wain, beacon of wisdom and truth.
Or not, I’m not one for religious organization myself. But yeah, sure, I’ll base my entire reason for living around some funny cat pictures, what else do I have to lose at this point.
Happy New Year.
