Empire of Light

Empire of Light, Sam Mendes's follow-up to the excellent 1917, is a low-key, very British attempt at covering a whole range of weighty themes and not quite nailing any of them. This isn't to say it's a bad film, despite the critical shoeing it's copped since release. It just seems slightly misguided. For instance, there are two main characters - Olivia Colman's Hilary, and Micheal Ward's Stephen (three if you count the gorgeous cinema itself) - but the film doesn't quite know when or where to shine its beam of light.

The Hilary section lands with a climactic flourish, but this happens about halfway through. Stephen's strand picks up from there and threatens to jumpstart with some character building (ex-girlfriend, mother) but then Hilary re-appears, soon followed by a National Front mob to add some tension and violence. The film juggles three main themes; mental health, racism and the power of cinema, and, unsurprisingly, only one of these is played for nostalgia. Hilary is suffering from schizophrenia, which is alluded to at the start via a lithium prescription, and yet her blossoming relationship with Stephen appears to be helping. Stephen, though, is a young black man, and hence, has his own troubles in Thatcher's England of the early 80s. 

Colman is great, she almost has a monopoly on the quivering, about-to-weep facial expression, but she does this kind of thing extremely well. Considering she rose to prominence with Mitchell and Webb in Peep Show, her range is pretty astounding. Ward carries himself well, in a slightly too faultless part, and Toby Jones plays his awkwardly wise, shambler role to perfection. Colin Firth storms in and wanders out without breaking a sweat (expect maybe in the hand shandy scene) and I thought Tom Brooke was nicely sympathetic as a member of the Empire Cinema staff.

The biggest plus for this film nerd was the cinema building, including Jones's projection booth. Mendes hired the supreme Roger Deakins again to shoot and they decked out an existing building in Margate to stand in for the fictional Empire. Margate was a favourite haunt of another magician of light, JWM Turner, and Deakins's visuals of the seaside and surrounds share some of the master's soft diffusion.

The films shown at the Empire throughout 1980 and 81 are notable in their reflecting of the story beats. The Richard Pryor/Gene Wilder prison comedy, Stir Crazy is followed by Chariots of Fire, then Raging Bull, and finally Being There. I won't elaborate on this, but I felt there was a reason for each one (though they could have just been historically accurate screening dates). Hilary's penchant for reciting poetry was a bit naff, even though I quite liked a couple of them, specifically one by Phillip Larkin that speaks to the film's message (see below). The veiled assertion that 'the movies' may have an affect on Hilary's mental state, where lithium failed, is admirable, though dubious. A cure for boredom, surely, but a cure for schizophrenia?  

Ultimately, this is a film that means well but has muddled the telling a bit, especially in the central relationship. I can't help thinking that if Stephen had been older, things may have made more sense, but perhaps I'm being ageist. A valiant effort.

Empire of Light is now showing at Luna and Palace Cinemas.

See also:

Mike Leigh set a lot of Mr. Turner (2014) in Margate, and there are flashes of Cinema Paradiso (1988), directed by Giuseppe Tornatore.

The Trees

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Phillip Larkin (1967)