Tajna Nikole Tesle

Movie was made almost 30 years ago in a poor country, still all those who speak about Tesla without knowing his personality /reading his memoirs or couple of biographies/ are just not right in their reviews.

Understanding Tesla, a brilliant, genius mind is very difficult to an ordinary person. If Tesla was as anybody else he wouldn't be him-self, Tesla the Great inventor! People should read more vs. watching stupid blockbusters and asking for every movie to be a blockbuster. The movie perhaps is not the greatest in it's production, but the story is faithful to the relevant autobiography in many details. Movie has depth for those who are able to see it; also it is made for those who wish to learn something about Tesla, not for those who seek pure and mindless entertainment.

I just watched this film for the 6th or 7th time, and came here to take a look at some of the cast, and was struck when I saw a review that started off "I've seen better documentaries." This is NOT a documentary any more than the Wolf of Wall Street was. This is a dramatization.

If you care about film, if you love stories, if you're inspired by life and all it has to offer, along with its frustrations, give this film a serious try. Some films have that 'resonance' where all parts of the added up film have evenly distributed values that make the film ring with emotional truth: This is certainly one.

I've seen it once. Then some time later I've seen it again, and since then it's become a film I like to watch at least once a year.

This is a dramatization of Tesla's life and work. And in this respect, with excellent support of an array of good actors, including Orson Welles and Strother Martin (I challenge you to not think of him as the white Morgan Freeman...seriously, down to the smallest detail) who provide a perfect contrast to Petar Bozovic' subtle, if-deadpan deliverance believable of the man himself; the film either grips you or not. If it doesn't, it's okay, there's plenty of other, much higher budget movies out there for you to see. If you're one of the lucky few who unlike the chief villains of the piece can understand what the hell Tesla's talking about, this movie will grow on you and you'll keep coming back to it.

The image or the sound is not perfect, the transfer from whatever film version there was out there is truly atrocious for something this good. A diamond in the rough, if you will. If you grew up with spotty TV-reception and remember having to fiddle with the bunny-ears on your TV, it may strike the right tone and you'll allow yourself to suspend disbelief.

This film can really use remastering, on all levels (and i love it so much I might make it my hobby), but to say the script is bad is just plain not true. It is just not what you're used to seeing, but that doesn't make it textbook incorrect. This film IS art. It was made that way, with extraordinary attention to detail all-round.

If you got here because you watched The Prestige and are curious to find out more about the great Nikola Tesla, watch this film. I'd stick my hand in fire here by saying Nolan must have seen this movie and liked it, because the similarities between certain authentic details in The Prestige and this film are undeniable.

This film is for those who understand the core concept which has made Steve Jobs so great - he wanted to help the world. Well, before him so did Nikola Tesla, but unlike the late genius, he forgot to factor in that he couldn't make the world rich so long as there is greed and above all ignorance, which is unfortunately just as natural.

Tesla also applied his resonance engines in bizarre forms of physical therapy. He created machines that flooded the human body with electrical currents and strong vibrations, intended to soothe aches and promote healing. And Tesla wasn't just the inventor of the "electrotherapeutic" device -- he was also a client. He reportedly became somewhat addicted to administering the treatment to himself, insisting that a session with the machine rejuvenated him on his long stretches of work without food or sleep. Tesla once let his friend Samuel Clemens try out the healing machine. The author is said to have enjoyed the experience tremendously -- until the vibrations brought him a case of spontaneous diarrhea. Tesla marketed this invention, and the Tesla Electrotherapeutic Company was one of the few commercial enterprises of his old age that was marginally successful.

If you're unfamiliar with the story of Nikola Tesla, get familiar with it now. In a nutshell, he was one of the rare inventors (actually the only one that comes to mind) who was dedicated foremost to benefitting life on Earth. While other inventors were after glory, gains and economic interests, Telsa simply wanted to improve the planet. In that respect, his ideas for clean, free power came long before our dwindling resources and global warming made it a selfish need of ours. Tesla was a true altruist.

This film tries to give us the gist of his life. The film takes a melancholy, ponderous approach which will doubtlessly bore many people. There are cryptic, wordless scenes of Tesla observing nature: sunsets, rivers, and of course lightning storms. This is a subtle way of showing how Tesla derived his inspiration from natural elements. However, in using this subtle approach, the director sacrifices momentum of plot.

Almost secondary is the action. The bitter rivalry from Edison (who, yes, was a sociopathic nut case who did indeed electrocute dogs and cats in public as this movie alludes) as well as the phenomenal accomplishments of Tesla (lighting the World's Fair and building the AC power station at Niagra Falls) are glossed over in light of Tesla's dreamy reveries. And Tesla's grandest scheme, a "free power Earth", was so ambiguously presented that we, the audience, come away feeling slightly unfulfilled.

Of course, that was the director's intent. We, the humans of planet Earth, are left unfulfilled, because obviously we're not hopping around the globe in free Telsa machines the way he had hoped. We don't even know 1/100th of what we could have possibly had, if history had taken a different turn.

This movie is to be approached very philosophically and artistically. If you're looking for a factual biopic, you might want to start elsewhere. But whatever you do, learn about Tesla any way you can. On the lighter side, check out Jim Jarmusch's "Coffee & Cigarettes" featuring a bunch of short comedy skits with famous actors & musicians (Bill Murray, Iggy Pop, Cate Blanchett, Steve Buscemi, etc) which revolve around Tesla's idea that the world is an acoustical resonator. For a quick laugh, see one of the skits on youtube starting The White Stripes, called "Jack Shows Meg His Tesla Coil".

I just watched this movie at Google Video. It is an awesome movie. I have just completeted reading 3 biographies of Nikola Tesla, and found the movie to be a pretty faithful re-creation of his life as described in the biographies. There are some things that were not 100% accurate in the film, but it was a great film! The film accurately represents the connection between Katherine Johnson and Nikola. This was well documnted in the biographies I have read of Tesla. The film also shows Edison, Westinghouse, J.P. Morgan, Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), Marconi, and other big-wigs of that time.

I was even surprised to see that it looks like they built a full scale version of the Colorado Springs Experiment Station and of the Wydenclyfe Tower! It was a great film!