John Seabrook, the author of the original New Yorker story about Bob Kearns, the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper, loves the movie adaptation with the same name, Flash of Genius. It retains every pungent line Seabrook put on paper, no matter how outlandish.
It's exhilarating in an authentic, pathos-streaked way to see Kearns, through Greg Kinnear's inspired characterization of a wary obsessive, representing himself during his trial against Ford Motor Co. for stealing his design. It's sad, uplifting and hilarious all at once to hear him tell the jury that he wears a badge that says "inventor."
Fidelity isn't why Seabrook is so pleased with this movie. "It was always my fear that a film version would turn it into just another underdog story," Seabrook says, "rather than a nuanced tale that ends with the reader unsure of what Bob Kearns has really won."
A nuanced tale is exactly what producer-turned-director Marc Abraham was after. When he read Flash of Genius, Abraham knew this was the movie to make his mark with as a director.
"I love stories about common guys," Abraham says. "They're my favorite kind of story. And I think I understand it. ... I drove beer trucks in Fort Knox, [Ky.], and worked in a linen factory in Brooklyn. ... I hold nothing higher in my esteem than an average guy doing what he has to do well."
So it's a pleasure to report that Flash of Genius is the most distinctive dramatic-feature debut since Bennett Miller's Capote. And Kinnear has the versatility and power in this film to rival Philip Seymour Hoffman. He gets the way Kearns turns his legal quest into an addiction that alienates him from his family and leaves him feeling impotent and immobilized.
Kearns and his wife, Phyllis (Lauren Graham), are sitting on a porch, watching their kids frolic on the lawn, when he asks her what makes a man successful. She says that when she sees the kids she thinks he is successful. Kearns is oblivious to her. Graham's embodiment of Phyllis' profound disappointment matches Kinnear's portrayal of Bob's emotional cluelessness.
The movie is full of glancing scenes that are also stunning. In Abraham's ensemble work, he conveys the way kids can develop a distance from an unstable parent like Kearns, then fill that gap with humor and sympathy - and doubt.
