Empire of Light

Sam Mendes: Empire of Light

Isabel Pinner (Telluride Film Festival 2022): " Sam Mendes fills his superbly cast, deeply personal drama with surprises, all emerging from a cinema in a working-class town in 1980s England. Hilary (Olivia Colman, in another knockout performance) is a single woman who runs the ticket booth, where she meets Steven (played with stirring confidence by relative newcomer Micheal Ward). Though on its surface a love story, EMPIRE OF LIGHT is not what you might expect, as Mendes sidesteps the expected nostalgia to instead follow the credo written on the cinema’s walls: “Find in light where darkness lies.” The film (which also features Colin Firth and Toby Jones) leads us through the characters’ profound struggles, both internally and with a society encountering massive cultural and economic shifts. Working again with the Oscar-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins, Mendes has created a rich, complex celebration that, at its core, reminds us how music and cinema can bring us together, even as the world drives us apart. –IP (U.K.-U.S., 2022, 119m) In person: Sam Mendes, Micheal Ward "

"Find in light where darkness lies"
- the motto of the Empire theatre

AA: Movies about the sunset of glorious picture palaces are a mini-trend in the history of the cinema. Most famous are the Italian ones by Giuseppe Tornatore (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso) and Ettore Scola (Splendor). Wim Wenders discussed the phenomenon in Im Lauf der Zeit / Kings of the Road. As a sidenote, in Risto Jarva's Onnenpeli there is an unforgettable sequence about the demolition of Finland's grandest palace cinema, Kino Palatsi.

Sam Mendes's film is original and complex. The grand Empire cinema has been built in the 1930s, the golden age of British movie palaces, when cinema was the reigning popular entertainment. It is now (in the year 1981) dilapidated externally but the spirit and the commitment of the dedicated staff are undiminished. The lives and the times are hard, and Mendes discusses the troubles honestly, but essentially Empire of Light is a celebration of the team spirit.

For cinephiles, the sequence in which the projectionist Norman (Toby Jones) shows the machine room to Stephen (Micheal Ward) is an accurate introduction to 35 mm film projection, from carrying the film print to the functioning of the carbon arcs and screening a print via switchover with double projectors.

The professionalism of the staff and the technical skill of the projectionist are there to provide the audience a night of magic. And because of that, after all the turbulences and transformations in the world of media, the cinema is still a temple of movies.

Film titles evoke the period, from Chariots of Fire to Stir Crazy (Gene Wilder / Richard Pryor). Giant marquee letters for Raging Bull are mounted. The most moving scene is the private screening of Being There for Hilary (Olivia Colman) who has never seen a film at her cinema before, being too busy in her job as duty manager. Regarding the cinema's past, the oldest reference is to Greta Garbo's The Painted Veil (1934).

A memorable motif is the pigeon with a broken wing. Stephen, whose mother Delia (Tanya Moodie) is a nurse, knows how to heal it until it is well enough to fly to freedom.

Stephen and Delia know all about racism, grown vicious in the era of Thatcher. Violent skinheads of the local National Front chapter break into the Empire and beat Stephen so brutally that it seems uncertain if he can survive.

Hilary has a medical condition. She suffers from schizophrenia but can cope with Lithium and in a way her position is a shelter job. She is excellent unless she neglects medication. She is also being abused for sexual favours by her boss Donald (Colin Firth).

Stephen and Hilary, the two colleagues with broken wings, become friends and lovers. There is cultural exchange in music: ska and two-tone from Stephen, Bob Dylan and Cat Stevens from Hilary.

Hilary is an avid reader, particularly passionate about poetry: Eliot (The Waste Land: "april is the cruellest month"), Tennyson and Auden. Her parting gift to Stephen is High Windows by Philip Larkin.

"Light is a state of mind". The excellent cinematography in glorious scope is by Roger Deakins. Seen in another way, Empire of Light might be sordid and depressing. But the beam of light transports us to a night of magic.

The most important emphasis is on the inner light, expressed in countless ways, especially in the warm solidarity of the cinema staff to the struggling protagonists, Hilary and Stephen.

Empire of Light might be one of the movies that suffer somewhat from what I call the "pandemic phlegmatic syndrome". It could be more vigorous or compelling. But after the screening, the film grows in my mind and I admire its sonority, the affinity with music and poetry.

Empire of Light was my film selection for my birthday. I saw it at Studio 28, the world's oldest art cinema, established in 1928, with interior decoration by Jean Cocteau, still going strong on Rue Tholozé at Montmartre, the 18th arrondissement of Paris. The motto:

"La salle des chefs d'oeuvres, le chef d'oeuvre des salles" (Jean Cocteau).