The Current Cinema - Barrie Pattison recommends EMPIRE OF LIGHT (Sam Mendes, UK, 2022)

Olivia Colman

I rate Sam Mendes’ new Empire of Light  as his most substantial work. He has gone on record as not wanting to have a recognisable style but this one is a perfect match for American Beauty, his most individual film and, if you look at his body of work, despite the variety of subjects and settings, you can see that the ones that show the most personality do have a unity. They are all about people who are unable to find sustained happiness in their so thoroughly established environments.  

Hey, that’s British films of the post war period - the school masters of the Mr. Perrin and Mr. Trail, The Guinea Pig and The Browning Version  trilogy, the sports fans of Maurice Elvey’s The Great Game or It’s a Dog’s Life, his worst films, the fun fair visitors in the free Cinema Films, or the wannabe lovers of Brief Encounter, which has a movie going sub-plot. These are the sub-strata of the British miserabilist tradition and they were the entertainment which was still circulating when Mendes grew up in sixties Reading.

Maybe that’s why Empire of Light’s notion of the movies has more in common with The Purple Rose of Cairo than it does with the current cycle of films that are celebrating cinema.

The setting, again a dominant element, is The Dreamland Multiplex in dimly established British South Coast Margate, repurposed as The Empire - Cinema, ballroom, restaurant and snacks. Manager Colin Firth dreams of restoring its former machine-made glory, retaining the red velvet curtains though two of its four auditoria are closed and pigeons roost in their empty shells. His hopes center on hosting the South Coast Premier of Chariots of Fire in the presence of the Mayor and Laurence Olivier.

That’s two Mr. Darcys in our picture already, though Firth authoritatively spades under his Jane Austin background, having dowdy deputy manager Olivia Colman  pleasure him in the office between sessions. She’s still a bit fragile after a spell in an institution and the rest of the artificial staff family aren’t coping all that well. Projectionist Toby Jones (below) has replaced his failed marriage with the magic of shutters and the phi-phenomenon, in his projection box papered with clippings of his favorite stars - the nearest the film comes to the current Babylon, Meet the Fabelmans enthusiast cycle. The ushers compete in describing the grossest item they’ve found clearing out the seats. One of the most deft touches is the way ticket box girl Hannah Onslow looks like being a major character but is moved from center by Colman going full blast. 

                                

Curiously, the isolated scene where Olivia calms the mean customer, who wants to take his chips and coffee into the show, is one of the film’s most resonant.

Into this environment they introduce ticket tearer Micheal Ward, who is black in the period where the streets are full of agro skin heads on about taking their jobs - “that stuff in Brixton.” Uneasily Ward and Colman become an item, restoring an injured pigeon with an improvised sock bandage, watching seaside fireworks from the roof and taking a red bus ride to the beach.

Dramatic incidents disrupt this unstable equilibrium - Colman’s losing it, the Gala Night and the street filling with thundering mods and rocker vandals in riot, to be hustled off by previously inactive bobbies. Enter Ward’s intimidating career-nurse mother Tanya Moodie.

Mendes has provided a heavy load to shift here and he deserves credit for coming close to resolving all the plot elements effectively, more than criticism for a too cheery outcome. Olivia has Toby show her first film - the carefully chosen Being There.

Performance and technical work are remarkable. Adding this one to his other films, with Mendes and the Cohens, makes cameraman Roger Deakins one of the notables in his field. Design and music complement the idea content. Empire of Light is one of the not so frequent films that makes its point by atmosphere more than narrative. The participants have chosen to push their skills to the limits and that’s something extraordinary in itself. It’s the kind of daring that endangered film making needs. Are this, Babylon and the rest, ominously going to be like the final burst of creativity in silent films - Metropolis, Asphalt,  Sunrise, Wings, Lonesome?

Micheal Ward, Olivia Colman