This isn’t the first time I find myself against the tide in defending a film that is being mercilessly slagged by other critics. You can read my defense of The Whale Here. But Empire of Light, I think, suffers from not being about what critics think it’s going to be about.
Like The Fabelmans, Sam Mendes’ film looks like it’s going to be one of several “magic of the movies” entries this year. It’s not its fault that it is a character study that is only set in an English seaside cinema.
Indeed, the great Olivia Colman is playing a woman who has more in common with Eleanor Rigby than a wide-eyed film fan. Colman is the shift manager of a cinema where the big boss occasionally shtups her is his office, though mostly Colman and her small crew tend to the concessions and ticket-taking. It seems a decent enough workplace, all things considered.
When a new young man, Stephen (Michael Ward) comes on board for a seasonal job, he and Colman develop a friendship that, improbably, becomes a romantic relationship. She’s white and middle aged, he’s black and college aged, and this is the 80s in an England that is not discrete about racial strife and bigotry.
The relationship floats up and down like a cork on the sea, and Colman’s past mental health issues are coming back – she will have to be sent away for a while, as she was before, to get back on her feet.
There are a few nods to cinematic stuff, like Stephen becoming an unofficial apprentice to projectionist Norman (Toby Jones), a lonely man whose mistress are the movies he only oversees through a small window in the booth.
But mainly, Mendes has apparently committed the sin of making a good old art-house character study. We drop in on the lives of a small cast, we follow the melancholy days and nights of one particular character, and we feel a little whisper of sadness near the end – the way one does when the summer is over, even if the potential for better days ahead is there for the taking.
Empire of Light | rated R | 3 out of 4 Stars | about 2 Hours
Guess a better title would be
Empire of Moods
because this unusual and different film is a study of moods.
Hopefully Olivia Colman will win at least one award.
J. Morris