I already knew a fair bit about Eadweard Muybridge before I went into this movie and I don't know whether or not that may have given me a slight bias, but this movie was incredible. The film revolves around Eadweard Muybridge (as the title would suggest) the incredibly eccentric "father" of cinema who or more less invented motion pictures. The story was incredibly interesting (to me anyway), seeing them reenact these immortal moments in much the same way that Eadweard would have done was amazing and the story involving the relationship between Eadweard and his wife was also incredibly well done. The film does have a few pacing issues at the beginning, showing us five years of Eadweard's life in as many minutes was fairly jarring but after that, it flowed at a consistent pace. The acting was fairly good for the most part (the worst performance coming from a woman who seemed to be Irish-Australian?) but the show-stealing performance thankfully comes from our lead star, Michael Eklund. The only other thing I've seen Eklund in is Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and despite not having a large role in it he's very entertaining to watch. I only wish he had more to do in that show because he was phenomenal in this movie. He felt so much like a real person, putting so much effort into making the eccentricities of the character feel realistic. My personal favourite thing about the film was the soundtrack. An interesting use of accordion, washboard, violin and vibraphone gives the entire film a unique feel. The film is a tribute to the man who started it all and I wish more people were aware of it as it deserves much more praise than it's been getting
especially Michael Eklund who was really, really good.
Review of Eadweard
