A heap of bad history, the movie rewrites the one - sided feud between the early electric power moguls Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) into a clumsy public - domain mockbuster of The Prestige; you can almost hear director Alfonso Gomez - Rejon (Me And Earl And The Dying Girl) trying to slap himself awake as he inserts overhead
shots,
canted angles, zooms, and wide -
angle Tom Hooper - isms into every scene.
Shot over the course of 18 days at the Savernam Estate's cavernous Tottenhouse House in the English countryside — a location that effectively doubles as an extra character in the otherwise spare, intimate psychological drama — the movie unfolds in mostly long - take wide
shots, though Rumley also isn't afraid to stage a
canted angle for art's sake.