PLOT: In 1981, a middle-aged movie theatre manager (Olivia Colman) gets a new lease on life when a young man (Micheal Ward) comes to work at the cinema.
REVIEW: Empire of Light is a muddled misfire from director Sam Mendes. A deeply personal story for him, with this being the first movie that gives him sole screenwriting credit; it seems confused about the type of movie it wants to be. The trailers and Searchlight are celebrating this as Mendes’ love letter to the healing power of cinema. Still, it’s a lot more about mental illness, with a tacked-on “magic of the movies” message that’s jarring compared to everything that’s come before. It’s well-made and watchable, with luminous photography and excellent acting, but it lacks any real weight and feels pretty minor compared to the rest of its director’s work.
The film is set in a picturesque seaside town where Olivia Colman’s Hilary manages the sprawling local cinema. Once a movie palace, it’s fallen into disrepair, with the upper level unused but decrepit in a beautiful “only in the movies” way that allows it to be Hilary’s private sanctuary. She’s recovering from a bad spell in life to the point that she takes lithium, and even though she’s worked for a decade in a movie theater, we’re supposed to believe she’s never bothered to watch a movie there. Heck, the way the ending is shot, I think we’re supposed to believe that she’s never actually watched a movie (ever), which feels fanciful.
Colman, as always, is terrific as the sad Hilary, who’s been engaging in loveless humping with her stuffy manager (Colin Firth – cast against type in a small role), but otherwise lives a lonely life. Things change for her when the young Stephen enters the fray. We know he’s a charmer right from the time he enters the cinema, with his good looks and low-key manner driving the Siouxsie and the Banshees-loving ticket-taker wild. It turns out, though, that the person he connects with is Hilary, with him showing her what a soulful guy he is by healing the broken wing of a bird that flies into the upper level. The two start an unlikely but affectionate affair. While skewed in a way that may not pass muster with more sensitive critics (were the genders reversed, many would call what goes on “grooming”), Colman and Ward both have a lot of charm. The latter is a find for Mendes, with him a star on the British TV show Top Boy.
Colman gets a good role here, with Hilary remaining a likable character throughout. It is evident early on that, even if she knows their affair will end, she wants the best for Stephen. The movie takes a bit of a left turn when it becomes clear that Hilary has a severe mental illness, climaxing with her running amuck at the big regional premiere of Chariots of Fire that her boss has pulled off.
By this point, when the film is 2/3 of the way over, very little of Empire of Light has had anything to do with the love of movies. There’s a scene where the crusty projectionist (Toby Jones) takes Stephen under his wing when they project Stir Crazy, but despite presumably being about people who love movies, no one ever talks about them. Very late in the game, Mendes introduces the right-wing white nationalist movement that cropped up in England in this era, resulting in a violent climax that leaves many of our heroes brutalized. Still, in the end, it’s dismissed. Despite the horror of this moment, Mendes tries to wrap things up in a neat little bow with an “aren’t movies great” message tacked on at the end that seems laughable considering all that’s happened up to this point. Mendes shows us a lot of ugliness in the movie’s final third that was only hinted at before, but it feels like It was added as an afterthought, which comes across as a little cheap.
Nevertheless, Mendes and DP Roger Deakins have made a beautiful-looking film, with the seaside setting allowing the latter to show his magic. It’s ironic that a movie about the love of celluloid was shot digitally, but no one can ever accuse it of not looking good. For the most part, the era is evoked well. Still, as a film fanatic, I was driven crazy because the cinema prominently displayed a poster for Sam Peckinpah’s The Killer Elite, which came out six years before this movie was set. There are a few other moments where the cinema seems to be still running films that wouldn’t be playing in 1981 that jarred me (especially when 1979’s Being There figures prominently in the plot). That’s a minor complaint that likely won’t bother 99.999% of viewers.
It depresses me a bit to slam a movie like Empire of Light, as I’m sure everyone involved, especially Mendes, had the best intentions. For me, though, it struck a sour note and felt highly uneven, with perhaps too much story packed into a 2-hour movie. It would have probably fared better as a limited series where the changes in tone would be a little less jarring.