It’s interesting to look back of the career of Sam Mendes. If there is one constant there, it’s that he seems mostly intent on making films about emotionally isolated, and inscrutable figures, all broken or consumed by their neuroses or the phantoms of their past. From Lester Burnham to James Bond to Michael Sullivan, there’s a coldness and a distance to the way he views and portrays characters which doesn’t always land. However, in the case of Empire of Light, his celebration of cinema and the old film theatres of Britain, this coldness is a thematic compliment that fits unerringly to the piece.
The film tells the story of around six months in the life of the Empire, a dwindling seafront cinema in a coastal English town at the start of the 80s. The main focus of the story is on Hilary (Olivia Colman), the quiet but hard working duty manager; struggling with mental illness, and the numbness of a lithium prescription. Her lonely days spent setting up the cinema, eating alone in restaurants, or at home, and occasionally acquiescing to the amorous and adulterous advances of her boss, Donald (Colin Firth). But into her doldrums steps vibrant young black co-worker, Stephen (Micheal Ward) whose unusual forwardness, taste in music, and exotic charms sweep her into a romance, and away from her self-care and medical treatments.
The cast, as you might imagine from such a wealth of talent, are impeccable. Colman and Ward do brilliantly in their respective roles, while Firth, Tom Brooke, Tanya Moodie and Toby Jones provide exemplary support as various other characters who are part of their lives. The script never feels less than realistic and plausible as the plot spins through romance, confrontations, anguish and a regional Chariots of Fire premiere. Touching on the difficulties of inter-racial coupling, depression, the Eastbourne riots, the relative lack of mental healthcare in the ’80s, and above all else a deep love of cinema.
Roger Deakins cinematography is, as ever, flawlessly beautiful; capturing the dualities of the film in crisp and stunning vistas, and flashes of vibrant colour against the seemingly endless mundane greys and beige of the sea shore. If there’s one aspect of the film that truly excels, it’s in the look and design. As the warm and welcoming beauty of the Empire with its crumbling and broken upper floors, reflects the way each character is a front behind which their more fragile secret selves hides. It’s also worth commending the simple but effectively stripped back music of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, adding to the quiet insularity of the film and the characters.
The trouble with Empire of Light is that, despite all this the whole never quite manages to coalesce into something truly cohesive. While the end result of the experience is undeniably uplifting, the moment to moment runtime of the film is often stilted, unintuitive and narratively grinding. In part because the story seems to want to talk about far too many things, leading to few of them getting quite enough focus. This is most glaring when Colman unexpectedly vanishes from the film for a lengthy section halfway through and Ward takes centre-stage. It’s an enjoyable enough, and plausible story beat, but it has the side-effect of throwing the audience’s engagement to the side.
The film also has an unmistakable, and not unwelcome similarity to Giuseppe Tornatore‘s classic Cinema Paradiso, and as far as homages go, you could do a lot worse. But that film casts a long shadow, and while Empire of Light might aspire to be England’s Cinema Paradiso, it never reaches those heights of sublime dreamlike wonder. Instead, like the broken and half-forgotten Empire cinema of the story, it feels like a landmark fallen into mundanity.
At cinemas nationwide Mon 9 Jan 2023