The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021)

[Greg]

I never heard of Louis Wain before seeing the trailer yesterday. Benedict Cumberbatch stars in what looked like a fanciful Victorian era drama about a man who painted pictures of cats. It look like a light hearted  romp that would be anodyne to the previous night viewing of Finch.

Sigh. Not so much. All the aforementioned is accurate except for the romp part. Wain did do much to bring cats to the forefront of people's lives with his anthropomorphic drawings of cats but his was not a happy life. The story was interesting especially since I knew nothing about Wain. He lives with his five sisters and mother. He lives a lonely life that gets less lonely and then gets lonely again. I assumed things were going to get bad when in the first scene they showed Wain as an old man dancing madly in an insane asylum.

But he painted a lot of cat pictures. It also helped to see Cumberbatch in a less than heroic role, broaden the palette as it were.

I've bee told the next film better be goddamn happy.

[Drunk Monk]

This is in my queue and I can't tell if it's a thumbs up or down from Greg.

[Greg]

It's good but sad. Though there isn't a lot to the story.

[Drunk Monk]

I'm okay with sad. I'll give it a peep eventually.

[cranefly]

I saw the trailer for this, know it's about a cat artist.

But does Electrical in the title pan out?  Or is that a spoiler?

Seems that they might be trying to mask that this is about the life of a cat artist, thinking that wouldn't sell.

[Drunk Monk]

Nothing sells like cats on the interwebz

[Greg]

Wain had ideas about electricity. It does tie in.

[Drunk Monk]

I only watched the 2nd half because Stacy had already watched the first part and paused. I picked up right about when Foy’s fate was revealed. 

FWIW, I studied Wain a bit in Abnormal Psych in college. Art Brut is art by the diagnosed and Wain is a major case (some include Van Gogh too). I’m still fascinated by Art Brut.

I think that gives me a by for skipping the beginning.

It was okay. Benedict does OCD well so that worked. He kinda does what he always does.

I can’t speak to the historical accuracy but the crazier Wain cats were shown at the end as his mental state degraded but I remember it as cyclical in that bipolar sort of way. It was almost 40 years ago when I took AbPsy but it was one of my all time favs in college and I still have that textbook which is decorated in Art Brut.

I liked the end credits where a lot of his art was shown the most.

The kaleidoscopic cats sequence struck me as almost period psychedelia but it didn’t quite work for me. Not sure why.

Now I’m wondering about our D00M artistes here and whether or not we’d be categorized as Art Brut. I kinda hope so.

[Drunk Monk]

In retrospect, this is another tortured artist tale, but even when Wain was at low points, he was still living well (except for all the cats). He lived in nice mansions and inevitably ended up in a lovely sanatorium, one that I’d like to vacation in. I never really felt his suffering.

[Greg]

I read the Wikipedia bio of Wain. There is still a question about his insanity or whether he was insane. There is a strong case to say he was on the Spectrum. Another is that the insanity was biologically based. He contracted some disease because of his close contact with the cats and their feces.