Empire of Light

Oscar-winning filmmaker Sam Mendes pays tribute to the cinema in Empire of Light, a film of lofty themes that doesn’t necessarily ring true or capture the depth that it’s aiming for. Mendes certainly is attempting to pull off another prestige film by merging modern hot-bottom issues like race relations, mental health, and alienation into a saga that mostly takes place in a southern seaside town in England in the 1980s. Fractured with dull melodrama with golden movie nostalgia that hold great intentions, this handsomely shot production holds a lot of first-rate talent across the board, but it’s executed with disappointing results.

Mendes, also saving as screenwriter for his original script, whose only other writing credit is 1917, is noble, but so many elements fail to ring true. While Olivia Colman plays a vulnerable but depressed middle-aged woman where her anxieties are pushed to its limits by the outside world. It’s worth mentioning, however, that Mendes actually recaptures some existential themes he’s explored before in his other films like Revolutionary Road and American Beauty, in which his main characters yearned to liberate themselves from their mundane existence in the real world.

The film has all the makings to be a great film with a stellar filmmaker and a superb cast that is headlined by Colman, Colin Firth, and supporting performances by Toby Jones and up-and-comer Michael Ward, along with great production values by Mendes frequent collaborator Roger Deakins, along with another score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, but all this great talent can make this film surface into an effective drama. The film wrestles with itself on its tone as it holds an uneven blend of cloying sentimentality and gloomy melodrama. It also doesn’t help that the romantic relationship in the film feels forced and the events that unravel in the film are clunky and didactic.

The film begins in many ways like American Beauty, we are introduced to Hilary (Colman) living a very lonely existence in her coastal apartment. She lives alone, eats alone, and you can sense she is in some state of depression. She frequently visits a receiving doctor (Tim Samuels) who goes through the patterns of her mind and energy, which Hillary keeps reassuring him that she feels better. Hilary is also an assistant manager of a vintage two-screen Empire Cinema, in which she has a garish affair in between her shifts with the theater’s main manager, Mr. Ellis (Firth). Hillary is sexually harassed to have quickies inside of his office with him that she reluctantly agrees to. This rendezvous doesn’t bring Hilary much satisfaction, considering Mr. Ellis is married and it only makes her feel more abashed and even lonelier for it.

The films strongest suits involve the small details of a movie theater. The concession stands, the ticket holders, the customers, the projectionist, and of, course the movies which we see posters of Being There, Private Benjamin, Raging Bull, and there are rumors that Chariots of Fire is going to have its big premiere there. The film has a much loftier turn, though, and Mendes isn’t interested in rehashing Cinema Paradiso. It becomes more of a character study, and Colman channels in a lot of rawness and emotional into the role. Her character is certainly attempting to recover from depression. However, her spirits are elevated once she encounters Stephen (Michael Ward), a young man in his college years that takes a job at the theater as he awaits news from a university application. Hilary and Stephen bond, and they hang out in the upstairs of the theater, where they find a wounded pigeon where Stephen heals it, which is a very forced and obvious metaphor for him attempting to heal Hilary’s crushed spirit.

Their romance blossoms, between the two, and you can’t help but think about Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, which is also about a middle-aged white man having a romance with a younger Black man. However, Mendes is no Fassbender here, as he never reaches the rawness or emotional complexity that was expertly captured by Fassbender in his 1974 masterpiece. While Mendes heart is in the right spot, he captures how racism got uglier under Margaret Thatcher’s leadership. but a lot of the scenes of Stephen enduring racism in the film feel forced and tacked on. Perhaps because Mendes is exploring such important topics of the plight of minorities through his gaze, but it comes from a distance. This is apparent when a violent mob of white supremacists walk near the theater during a protest; they spot Stephen, and attack him, leading him to the hospital that comes across very heavy-handed. Mendes had so many directions to take the narrative about the magic of the movies, yet he steers so much of the narrative into different directions where the drama feels dour and equally maudlin.

When not fully igniting on themes of race relationships, the film doesn’t resonate as a character study either. While Hilary’s mental health regresses, she has a breakdown at the premier of Chariots of Fire. It’s implied she has endured a lot of suffering from sexism and male dominance throughout her life which has led to her breakdowns–she has a moment to combat –but the scene of her on stage holds strong acting by Colman; the writing feels very overwritten and unconvincing. Just as much as the underwritten romance.

Much like other films as of late that play tribute to the moviemaking like Ti Wests X or Spielberg’s The Fablemans, Empire of Light feels a lot more precious, especially in its hackneyed, unearned Cinema Paradiso moment where Hilary asks the theaters projectionist (Tobey Jones) to play a movie for her. Even with a beautiful score by Reznor and Ross, along with luminous cinematography by Deakins, the scene fails to resonate. While it thematically makes sense why, Mendes crosscuts between the projector screen playing Hal Ashby’s Being There, which was about a man who lived in a television world where he is forced to live in the outside world, where he is more beloved and embraced. Hilary’s character is perhaps the opposite, where she finds her place within the artifice, even when she worked at the theater for several years. She ends up finding great joy in the cinema, which even leads to Stephen recommending a list of films for her to watch. What is supposed to feel like a sublime moment that plays tribute to the power of the movies, ends up derailing with its cloying sentimentality.

Perhaps this is an ode to cinema and there are many pleasant moments to behold, but it just ends up feeling way too manufactured to ring true. It’s hard to buy into a lot of it. Sadly, Mendes turns to very simplistic answers, common banalities, and uneven storytelling in place of genuine humanism, making so many aspects of the film feel false and contrived.