Empire of Light Review

Not enough criticism is levelled at the proliferation of imagined, towering spectacles that moviemakers believe the cinema is. Not the concept of it but the literal place. Nothing is worse than shifting bodies into seats to watch the latest budget spectacle, the floor sticky with popcorn grease in a room clouded in coughs and mutters. Empire of Light is another throwback piece. If a lockdown taught Hollywood and its namesakes anything, it is that their precious entertainment venues are damned if nobody trudges inside of them. Being struck by that for just a year or so led some to feel truly moved by their experiences before. It is the only explanation for the “we love movies” boom that Sam Mendes now throws his hat into the ring of.  

Stringy, unconvincing relationships are heaved around that love for the big screen experience. Olivia Colman has rightly remained at the heart of many a stuttering feature, her Academy Awards glow keeping Empire of Light from being complete, dead air. Mendes may ask his performers to put their heart into this, and they may do so, but nothing comes from how soppy and overexposed he makes the at-first raw emotions of the picture palace and its inevitable closure. Quiet and methodical moments, an unmoving camera crawls over the opening credits. They are there to showcase an expected and shared beauty of the cinema rather than the people within it. Place is more prominent than experience, Mendes fails to convince of that with his work here. 

Riding on the coattails of British charm in a time where under one roof culture could be shared among employees, Empire of Light attempts to create a commentary on the piers of the South Coast. It fails not because the performances are weak, but far from it. Micheal Ward and Tanya Moodie are in fine form in a feature that inflicts love, hierarchy and a connection to place rather than person. Much of Empire of Light is well shot and showcases emotionally ready displays of how the cinema can bring people together, but Mendes never moves his brooding camerawork onto satisfying or attentive conclusions. His build-up is shockingly bleak but feels occasionally numb in the face of such issues, all helmed well enough by Colman in another well-deserved leading spot. She grapples expectedly well with the discomfort, the back-and-forth with Colin Firth and the bubbling intimacies that come alongside Ward.

But Empire of Light has the fatal fault of many features to depict the big screen in the past. It has no unique heart to it. Cinema Paradiso to Burn, Hollywood, Burn and all the way toward the route of Blonde and Mank provide the same lookback on the entertainment industry. Revered and tragic. Empire of Light goes for the vicious and personal moments that come from the people who rely on film, rather than those making it. The effect is much the same yet has all the pockets of chilling personal horror out of expectation for a narrative drive. Colman is always a solid draw. Although she is the emotive core, the tragic character at the centre of Empire of Light, her appearance, and her presence alongside Ward, does not do much. Mendes does little beyond active and brooding strokes, the still camera shifting as his kid in a sweet shop love for the little bits of front-of-house are far from the infectious, romantic strokes he hopes them to be. He focuses on the tragedy of losing the cinema with glib nostalgia, out of step with the real world.