I Can See Clearly Now!| Greg Kinnear celebrates a successful test run of his new windshield wiper in Flash of Genius.
FLASH OF GENIUS
Directed by Marc Abraham. Starring Greg Kinnear, Lauren Graham, Dermot Mulroney. Now playing.
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Pop historian Simon Winchester has said that the key to writing a successful history book is to find some world-changing invention that people now take for granted, and then simply tell the story of its inventor (bonus points if that person is also brilliant/insane).
Flash of Genius, a biopic about the man who invented the intermittent windshield wiper, is proof that Winchester’s formula isn’t as bulletproof as it sounds. This is a dull story, dully told, about a dull inventor who invented a dull device.
In early 1960s Detroit, Bob Kearns, a thoroughly square professor of mechanical engineering, came up with the idea for a windshield wiper that worked on a timer, modelled after the human eye — a big improvement over the all-or-nothing models that were the standard at the time. Kearns took his idea to Ford, which initially expressed interest but declined a partnership, only to suspiciously introduce their own intermittent wipers the following year. Kearns then launched a massive copyright infringement lawsuit that lasted more than a dozen years, and which he eventually won.
First-time director Marc Abraham takes this story, which fits so neatly into the man-versus-The-Man formula, and manages to make it not just tedious but also bewildering. All of the familiar dots are there — a scene establishing Kearns’ (Greg Kinnear) initial naïveté, a scene showing the lawsuit consuming the rest of his life, a triumphant court testimony celebrating the virtues of the common man — but there’s no attempt to connect any of them. What’s left isn’t even the outline of a cliché.
The only other noteworthy aspect of this film is its utter contempt for anything that doesn’t shove the plot forward. The first lines of dialogue are about the car industry — spoken by a pastor, during his sermon, no less — and within 90 seconds, Kinnear has come up with his invention. That leaves 7,110 seconds (118.5 minutes) and at least half a dozen time shifts to trudge through, but no character or anecdote can distract Abraham from his path to that guilty verdict; he’s an unthinking, unfeeling homing missile.
Kinnear is a fine actor, and it’s nice to see him in a leading role, but he’s much better than this kind of material (though I’m sure the New Yorker article the script is based on is much more interesting). How does Kearns afford to fight a 12-year legal battle? Why do his six children rally around him and seemingly abandon his ex-wife (Lauren Graham)? What, exactly, is the deal with his nervous breakdown? There’s no excuse for such a well-documented true story to have this many blank spots.
