The Electrical Life Of Louis Wain

Olivia Colman provides crisp narration, first giving us the context of the period and cheerfully overlooking, as she does so much else, the repressive and colonialist elements of the era: "Aside from its bizarre social prejudices, Victorian England was also a land of innovation and scientific discovery. Many of the world's finest minds were digging deep into the nature of electricity." But while scientists and inventors were trying to use electricity to illuminate darkness and operate machinery, Louis Wain believed that electrical forces are what pull us forward in time and help us hold onto our memories. He called electricity "the key to all of life's most alarming secrets." This idea helped inspire his pictures of cats, which became more stylized and kaleidoscopic, almost psychedelic, over the decades.

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain

"The true story of eccentric British artist Louis Wain (Benedict Cumberbatch), whose playful, psychedelic pictures transformed the public's perception of cats forever. Set in the early 1900s, we follow Wain as he seeks to unlock the "electrical" mysteries of the world and, in so doing, to better understand his own life and the profound love he shared with his wife Emily Richardson (Claire Foy)." 041b061a72