The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021) Best Movie Quotes

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Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Claire Foy, Jamie Demetriou, Andrea Riseborough, Toby Jones, Hayley Squires, Stacy Martin, Julian Barratt, Sharon Rooney, Aimee Lou Wood, Adeel Akhtar, Sophia Di Martino, Olivier Richters, Olivia Colman, Nick Cave, Taika Waititi, Richard Ayoade

OUR RATING: ★★★½

Story:

Amazon Prime bio-drama directed by Will Sharpe. The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021) centers on the true story of eccentric artist Louis Wain (Benedict Cumberbatch), whose playful, sometimes even surreal and psychedelic pictures, helped to transform the public’s perception of cats forever. Moving from the late 1800s through to the 1930s, 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).

Our Favorite Quotes:

'Just remember, however hard things get, however much you feel like you're struggling, the world is full of beauty.' - Emily Richardson-Wain (The Electrical Life of Louis Wain) Click To Tweet

Best Quotes

H.G. Wells: [on wireless] The artist Louis Wain made the cat his own. He invented a cat style. A cat society. A whole cat world. Cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves. But that is not what is important. What is important is that Louis Wain devoted his life to making all our lives happier, and cattier. In doing so, he undoubtedly raised up the cat in society, and he changed our world for the better.

Narrator: Aside from its bizarre social prejudices, and the fact that everything stank of s**t, 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, to harness its power for practical use.

Narrator: But for the young Louis Wain, electricity was something else, something so extraordinary and strange that the human mind was barely able even to comprehend it. A mysterious, elemental force that on occasion, he could feel shimmering in the ether, and the key to all of life’s most profound and alarming secrets.

Dan Rider: You’re very muddy. Did you get into a fight or something?
Louis Wain: No. I was attacked by a one and a half ton bull.
Dan Rider: Oh. That was you, was it?

Louis Wain: I wanted to get a closer look at him. And, well, he didn’t have a very good sense of humour, put it that way.
Sir William Ingram: Not renowned for their sense of humor, are they, really, bulls?
Louis Wain: Aren’t they?

Sir William Ingram: Why were you throwing peanuts at a bull?
Louis Wain: I heard they like peanuts, and that it calms them down. But it didn’t work. The trouble with these show cows, huge egos.

Henry Wood: This is not an opera, Mr. Wain. By conventional standards, it barely qualifies as music. And this is not a plot. It’s just some of your thoughts. I applaud your enthusiasm, but you have to master the basics of harmony first.
Louis Wain: I’ve invented my own harmonies.
Henry Wood: Yes, and that could be part of the problem. If it’s any consolation, I thought the little drawing you did on the cover sheet was rather charming.

Young Marie: Louis, did you meet an eligible young lady of means in Hampshire?
Louis Wain: No, I did not. But I did meet some goats, some geese, and a rather cantankerous bull.
Josephine Wain: That’s no use. You can’t marry a goat, can you?

Caroline Wain: Miss Richardson, why were you in the wardrobe?
Emily Richardson-Wain: Yes, well, it helps me to concentrate sometimes to be in a confined space. And with something like Shakespeare, I know it inside out already, so I just block out the world and play it through in my head.

Mrs. Wain: We’re a family of mischief-makers, Miss Richardson. We may as well have been called the Shenanigans.

Emily Richardson-Wain: It must be exhausting, having to be the grown-up.
Caroline Wain: Well, I am a grown-up, so it’s not exhausting.

Narrator: Louis had learnt to control the chaos in his mind by always moving, and for many years had been quite content frantically pursuing his various interests, as failed art teacher, failed musician, aspiring inventor, enthusiastic polyhobbyist, and, of course, part-time illustrator. But the one thing he had never considered, in spite of constant pressure to find an eligible young spouse, was the possibility of ever leading any kind of romantic life.

Narrator: And so, as a strange, tingly feeling crackled in his breast, and sparkled through this loins, I think it would be fair to say that the innocent Mr. Wain didn’t really know what the hell was going on. He had an inkling, of course. But how could he be sure that these feelings would be reciprocated?

'You cannot run away from your grief. It trails you, like a violent shadow.' - Mrs. Wain (The Electrical Life of Louis Wain) Click To Tweet

Narrator: What of the unsightly harelip that he so sproutily disguised with his careful moustache? Upon closer scrutiny, she would surely notice this unfortunate deformity and run a mile. Or perhaps, she would not be so impressed to discover, that in spite of the rather playful exterior, his mind was a dark, screaming hurricane of crippling anxieties and recurring nightmares. Not to mention, of course, the gossiping neighbours who would all consider it ghastly for a lowly governess to be engaging in these bourgeois games of courtship.

Narrator: Suffice it to say, there were a great many obstacles that stood in the way of Louis and Emily.

Louis Wain: Miss Richardson?
Emily Richardson-Wain: Yes?
Louis Wain: When it comes to drawing, there’s only really one rule you ever need to teach. It’s to look.

Louis Wain: [after shaving his mustache] I hereby atone for my drunken imposition by presenting myself to you naked.
Emily Richardson-Wain: Oh, please don’t present yourself to me naked, Mr. Wain. I might consider that to be a secondary imposition, arguably greater than the first.
Louis Wain: But you cannot have failed to observe that I have quite a profound harelip.
Emily Richardson-Wain: Yes. What of it, Mr. Wain?
Louis Wain: Sorry. Have I made a mistake?
Emily Richardson-Wain: No, I think you look very handsome.

Caroline Wain: I mean, we cannot let him out looking like this! Why you’ve committed this most wanton and violent act of self-harm, I do not know. How will he ever meet a woman of fortune?
Claire Wain: Caroline, he’s had a shave, that’s all.

'When it comes to drawing, there's only really one rule you ever need to teach. It's to look.' - Louis Wain (The Electrical Life of Louis Wain) Click To Tweet

Louis Wain: [referring to his drawings in his journal] Did you find it horrifying? All those dark and disturbing visions?
Emily Richardson-Wain: No. I found it quite reassuring, to be honest. I tend to have nightmares about not being able to get out of places. I once spent an entire dream stuck in a very complicated barn.
Louis Wain: Well, thank God you didn’t get stuck in that wardrobe.
Emily Richardson-Wain: Yeah, thank God. Thank God I had you to let me out of it.
[they kiss]

Emily Richardson-Wain: I just wanted to thank you, Mr. Wain, for a very pleasant evening. I had a very nice time. I’ve taught of countless adventures from the safety of a schoolroom. But it was exciting to be taken on one for once.

Louis Wain: [as he kisses her] I don’t care what people think.
Emily Richardson-Wain: Nor do I.

Narrator: As this peculiar romance blossomed clumsily into flower, the discrepancy in their social standing became the cause of great controversy. One neighbor, it was widely rumored, vomited immediately upon hearing news of their courtship. For the coupling of a gentleman with a lady of the servile class was considered nothing short of revolting. Not to mention that the undeniably charming Miss Richardson was, by the standards of the day, positively geriatric. But Louis cared little for these foolish preconceptions, and in January of the year 1884, he asked Emily for her hand in marriage.

'You're the first person ever to see that they are in fact ridiculous. They're silly, and cuddly. And lonely. And frightened, and brave. Like us.' - Emily Richardson-Wain (The Electrical Life of Louis Wain) Click To Tweet

Narrator: Louis and Emily lived a perfectly normal, if societally unconscionable married life.

Doctor: I trust you will understand me when I say, you have terminal cancer of the breast.
Emily Richardson-Wain: Yes, Doctor. Just when I was starting to enjoy it.

Herbert Railton: Okay, Louis, I’m worried about you.
Louis Wain: Why?
Herbert Railton: You have a cat as a pet.

Louis Wain: Do you know the true meaning of the phrase, “There’s no time like the present,” Herb? It’s that there isn’t. It’s too fleeting. In fact, I have a hypothesis that electricity is what pushes us through time. We turn the past into the future with the power of our electricity. But that process is entirely reversible. Remembering the past is no different from imagining the future. And neither is different to life itself. I can remember Emily in the future, and she will be there. Do you see what I’m saying, Herb? Do you see what I’m saying?

Sir William Ingram: But my advice to you is this. Spend the time that you gain with your wife, because when she is gone, it will hurt. These are precious weeks, Louis. Do you understand?

Louis Wain: [as they are sat in the forest] Electricity. I feel electricity. Can you feel it?
Emily Richardson-Wain: This is our place. This is where I’ll be, Louis. When you need me.

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Sir William Ingram: And you capture something of the cat, Louis. Perhaps because you yourself are a bit of a renegade. An outcast, dare I say. How you’ve managed to conjure images of such delight, at such a dark time, I don’t know.

Emily Richardson-Wain: Throughout history, cats have been worshiped as mystical gods, and maligned as the evil allies of witchery and sin. But I think you’re the first person ever to see that they are in fact ridiculous. They’re silly, and cuddly. And lonely. And frightened, and brave. Like us. One day, I don’t think it’ll be so peculiar to have a cat in the house as a little pet.

Emily Richardson-Wain: What’s going on in that funny little head of yours?
Louis Wain: Sometimes, I think about the day you won’t be here, and I have to say, Emily, I find it intolerably difficult to imagine. I will be so very alone.
Emily Richardson-Wain: You’ll be alright, Louis. You’ll have Peter.

Louis Wain: This time with you, Emily, playing with Peter in the evening, sitting by the fire, these have been the best days of my entire life.

Louis Wain: I don’t know why it is that I find it so very difficult just being here on this earth, but I can say with absolute certainty that you have made it much, much better. You make the world beautiful, and warm, and kind. I just wanted to say thank you for that before it’s too late.
Emily Richardson-Wain: I don’t make the world beautiful, Louis. The world is beautiful. And you’ve helped me to see that too.

Emily Richardson-Wain: Just remember, however hard things get, however much you feel like you’re struggling, the world is full of beauty. And it’s up to you to capture it, Louis. To look. And to share it with as many people as you can. You are a prism through which that beam of life refracts.

Narrator: In the years following, Louis buried the pain of his grief under a quite extraordinary quantity of cat pictures. Almost without realizing, he had achieved an alarming degree of success, and completely altered the public’s attitude towards the humble cat.

Louis Wain: Electricity. From the head. Right down the body to the tail. Cats are excellent conductors of electricity. Their features are already changing as they become more domesticated and intelligent. Their eyes will become larger, their heads bigger as their brains grow in size. They will turn blue. And eventually, they will stand on their own hind legs and communicate to us in our own language.
Judith: Gosh. I’d no idea it was so complicated. Did you say that they would turn blue?
Louis Wain: Yes. Of course.
Judith: Wow.

Caroline Wain: I assumed you’d been spending it all on frivolous luxuries. Because you’ve clearly quite forgotten about your family. And yet, here you are living in squalor and chaos!
Claire Wain: Don’t shout, Caroline!
Caroline Wain: I am not shouting, Claire! I’m explaining to him with force.

Caroline Wain: You’re not a child, Louis! You’re the man. You’re a man. Our parents worked hard for our reputation. They worked hard to build a fortune for their children, and you have squandered it on wretched cats! And on a willful, doomed, tainted romance! You’ve destroyed our family with your selfishness, and you continue with your childish delusions which conspire to keep us all in penury. The indignity that we’ve suffered at your hands, Louis!
Louis Wain: I didn’t do it on purpose.
Caroline Wain: You didn’t do what on purpose? You didn’t get married on purpose?

Marie Wain: [to Louis] They’re going to throw me out because I had relations. I had relations in the graveyard. And we laughed. They’re just jealous because I saw heaven. And that’s why I’ve got the leprosy as punishment. They’re all spinsters. They say it’s your fault. Because of Miss Richardson. But it’s because they’re ugly, and they lie, and plot, and scheme.

Sir William Ingram: In spite of your rather irregular temperament, and nigglingly peculiar foibles, in this occasionally bleak world, you have shown a resilience that I admire. And if you must know, you’ve brought me rather a lot of cheer with your pictures.
Louis Wain: Of cats?
Sir William Ingram: But they’re not just cats, are they? You are a brave soul, Louis.

Marie Wain: I’m scared, Louis.
Louis Wain: Me too.

Narrator: After the catastrophic marriage of their only son, the fact that one of their number was now officially a raving lunatic did nothing to help the family’s social status.

Narrator: And then, his great teacher and best friend, his dear old Peter, passed away. Like a frenzied bat in a burning oven, Louis’s heart was a screaming, flapping mess. He wept without ceasing for several years, but at the same time, he was overtaken by an extraordinary new discovery, that the more intensely he suffered, the more beautiful his work became. He realized that the memories he still held of his dear wife, Emily, and darling Peter, had become powerful conductors of that mysterious electricity in the atmosphere that he had so far been unable to harness.

Louis Wain: I have helped this country a great deal in this regard. Now I must help the cats of America. For better or worse, Dr. Elphick, I am a prism and a transformative funnel for negative electricity. In these tumultuous times, I want to make the people of America smile. I’ve never seen an American smile in my life.
Caroline Wain: You have never seen an American.
Louis Wain: Well, it’s time to change that.

Louis Wain: The only reason that you are here this afternoon, is my sister has summoned you because she is extremely jealous, and has been since I was twelve years-old, and will do anything to prevent me reaching my full potential.
Dr. Elphick: Mr. Wain, there is no question that you are delusional. But mere delusions of grandeur are not sufficient reason to commit you to hospital.

Mrs. Wain: You can run away from your family, Louis. You cannot run away from your grief. It trails you, like a violent shadow.

Max Kase: You’re a personality. Wouldn’t you say, Alicia, honey? You’re Mr. Cat. You’re Cat Man.
Alicia Simmonds: Cat Man.
Max Kase: He’s Cat Man.

Louis Wain: Her whispers come in the leafy tickle of the wind, or the wet crackle of the electric rain. And at night, I turn the dial of the wireless, hoping to catch clues in the atmospheric electricity that comes from the afterlife. How to continue with this crusade? For it was Emily who first taught me the true nature of cats. The true value of cats.

Louis Wain: It is only through understanding cats, how they are misunderstood, and mistreated, for no other reason than simple blind prejudice, that I came to understand human beings. How we are all corrupted by a foul form of electricity. And it is only through the work of those who have the transformative gift that we can defeat it. Without change, we are a fallen species with no future, an animal whose only instinct is to destroy!

Narrator: And then, when attempting one day to dismount from a moving omnibus, he fell head first into a profound coma, and saw a vision of the year 1999. To everyone’s surprise, his lucky futurist cats were a great success, and orders were made all across Europe. But, at the same time, negative electricity around the globe had risen to a critical level, and military tensions blistered into a state of war.

Dan Rider: [referring to the mental hospital] Do you like it here, Mr. Wain?
Louis Wain: There are no cats. I cannot see outside.
Dan Rider: Oh. That must be rather difficult for someone like you, Mr. Wain, who’s spent his entire life examining the world, suddenly not to see it.

Louis Wain: I have failed. I have failed her, Mr. Rider.
Dan Rider: I don’t think you have failed, Mr. Wain, from what you have been saying.

Dan Rider: Why do you think Emily wanted you to keep painting pictures, Mr. Wain?
Louis Wain: To help people. To show them.
Dan Rider: Perhaps. And there’s no doubt that you’ve done that. But I have a rather different theory. I think she wanted you to keep painting so you would not be alone.

Dan Rider: When you paint, Mr. Wain, you connect with other people, and you give them a piece of yourself. But they are also connecting with you. And that electricity that you describe, that you felt in the presence of Emily, I’d call that love, Mr. Wain. And that is still here.

Narrator: For Louis Wain, electricity was not just something that we use to make toast, or to power a bulb in the bathroom. It was something bigger, something so extraordinary and strange that the human mind was barely able even to comprehend it. A mysterious elemental force that on occasion, he could feel shimmering in the ether, and the key to all of life’s most profound and alarming secrets.

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