In Tesla, brilliant, visionary Nikola Tesla (Ethan Hawke, Training Day) fights an uphill battle to bring his revolutionary electrical system to fruition, then faces even thornier challenges with his new system for worldwide wireless energy. Tesla’s uneasy interactions with his fellow inventor Thomas Edison (Kyle MacLachlan, Twin Peaks) and his patron George Westinghouse (Jim Gaffigan) are in sharp contrast to his sidewinding appeal to financial titan J.P. Morgan (Donnie Keshawarz). Meanwhile, Morgan’s daughter Anne (Eve Hewson) takes a more than casual interest in the inventor. Anne analyzes and presents Tesla’s story as it unfolds, offering a distinctly modern voice to this exhilarating, offbeat drama which, like its subject, defies convention.
For in-depth thoughts on Tesla, please see my colleague Dom Fisher’s review from its original theatrical release here.
Video Quality
Tesla comes to Blu-Ray in a 1080p presentation that is quite fetching. This is a visually rich film with beautiful shots of the various period-specific settings where you can see an incredible amount of detail. Interior settings provide a nice reference to showcase the depth at play in the image. The vivid colors really pop with all the earth tones on display from the greens of the foliage to the warm lighting that is of paramount importance to the film. There are moments of lightning flashes and electricity slinking around the screen that are quite eye-popping. This is a film with a natural color palette that is reproduced perfectly here with a pleasing radiance. The white levels are handled beautifully, along with the intensely deep blacks that do not appear to suffer from any compression artifacts. This is of great relief due to the many dark settings that reside within the film. There are no obvious signs of any noise or other such digital nuisances. The skin tones look very detailed and natural all around. This presentation is a real knockout on all accounts.
Audio Quality
The Blu-Ray disc comes with a DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track that captures the inventive journey in sound that this film embarks upon. This is a very frenetic film which allows the track to get more of a workout than you would expect from a period piece. The spirited score from John Paesano is showcased beautifully here with an enveloping use of the surround speakers. The dialogue comes through crystal clear without ever being overpowered by the environmental effects or the score. The sound design is just as precisely thought-out as the on screen visuals with all of the sounds positioned just right in the mix. The environmental effects create a really nice soundscape of idle chatter and weather sounds. This is not an action-packed film, but the movie brings a healthy amount of low activity to the proceedings so you never forget that there is a subwoofer in the room. This is an excellent sounding release that brings the movie to life in a really splendid way.
Special Features
- Behind The Scenes of Tesla: A 19-minute featurette in which the cast and crew discuss the challenges of making a movie, bringing Tesla’s story to the audience, why the actors wanted to attach themselves to the project, the tone of the film and more. This is a pretty standard talking-head style series of interviews, but there are a lot of interesting anecdotes.
- Theatrical Trailer: The two-minute trailer is provided which gives you a good sense of the tone of the film.
Final Thoughts
Tesla is a film that shakes up the conventional period piece with some daring narrative choices that will either charm you or make you roll your eyes. Ethan Hawke gives yet another incredible performance that helps keep this movie from buckling under the weight of its own ambition. Shout! Factory has given the film a Blu-Ray with an incredibly strong A/V presentation and at least one notable supplemental feature. The film is imperfect, but it connects enough with some of its big creative swings that you cannot help but be entertained by it. Recommended
Tesla will be available to purchase on Blu-Ray and DVD on February 2, 2021.
Note: Images presented in this review are not reflective of the image quality of the Blu-Ray.
Disclaimer: Shout! Factory has supplied a copy of this disc free of charge for review purposes. All opinions in this review are the honest reactions of the author.
Dillon is most comfortable sitting around in a theatre all day watching both big budget and independent movies.
