Directed By Sam Mendes

Starring – Olivia Colman, Michael Ward, Colin Firth

The Plot – Hilary (Colman) is a cinema manager struggling with her mental health, and Stephen (Ward) is a new employee longing to escape the provincial town where he faces daily adversity. Together they find a sense of belonging and experience the healing power of music, cinema, and community.

Rated R for sexual content, adult language and brief violence

EMPIRE OF LIGHT | Official Trailer | Searchlight Pictures – YouTube

POSITIVES

Any film that properly defines the value and therapeutic escapism of cinema, especially in that from a life of great despair and mundanity, is one that I will always appreciate, but particularly in this instance from the ingredients of the environment that illustrate the wonder of an audience held captive to its supernatural powers. It starts with the setting of this art-deco vintage theater, and the radiance it bestows to both its audience and the captivating cinematography exuberated effortlessly from the great Roger Deakins, whose luminous lighting inside of the auditorium supplants a transforming feeling from the intentionally bland and lifeless visuals of matters persisting outside of the theater. Deakins luster of lavishes and essentially the area of the film pertaining to the passion and love for cinema is when this film is truly at its best and most coherent, allowing Mendes an introspective scope into the minds of its patrons, as well as brandishing the irreplaceable value to a perfect world persisting on-screen that we unfortunately can never reciprocate in the real world off-screen. Beyond this, the performances are a consistent delight, but especially in the depths of Colman, who once again will receive an Academy Award nomination for the humanity she supplants to this chemically imbalanced protagonist. Colman’s versatility shifts casually between subtly subdued to thunderously boisterous in ways that not only convey magnitude to the level of her emotional dexterity as an actress, but also one that firmly conjures the spontaneity of her character’s mental frailty in design, leading to unpredictable moments inside of pocketed conflicts where she amplifies the compelling tension inside of interactions that could, and often do, go south at any minute. Finally, while Mendes capabilities as a writer do him little to no favors throughout the engagement, his talents as a director are still apparent with a capsulized time warp inside of the setting that imbeds itself seamlessly to the appeal of the visuals and environmental psychology persisting beyond. Whether in the immensity of the Markee depicting some of the biggest titles in 80’s cinema, or the subtleties of the fashion trends transcribing a timeless appeal in their consistency, everything here effectively triggers consciousness into the particular place in time, all the while imbedding the reality and motivations for a lot of the complexity of character movements that sometimes feel suspect by their defiance of law and civilization.

NEGATIVES

This film is attempting to do so much with as little to no effort as humanly possible. Sometimes it’s a love-letter to the beauty of cinema, sometimes it’s a race war depicting England’s dark and gruesome history with minorities, sometimes it’s a love story about two opposites attracting inside of this setting where anything feels possible, and even sometimes it’s a dissection of mental health and the urgency to know when to seek help with such internal conflicts. As expected, this many subplots and thematic impulses inside of a 105-minute run time leaves the execution feeling a bit disjointed, especially considering there’s not enough time to donate to flesh out any one of them effectively, but beyond that their sudden spontaneity in arrival never feels remotely earned, leaving the film feeling like one strangely straining exercise in mundane futility that only exists for shock value. The film is so strange at times that I honestly waited for an elephant to come crashing through the front entrance of the cinema, if only because everything reality flew off of the rails abruptly, for one of the most bizarre instances of film that I’ve seen this Oscar season. I use the word bizarre because the worst of these offenses is easily in tackling Colman’s character’s mental instability, exploiting it for entertainment value, without truly caring about where or how it even materializes in the first place. Aside from the script itself, I never fully bought into the love angle between Colman and Michael Ward. Call it their lack of chemistry or call it the rushed unraveling between their dynamic. Either way, it never feels like the kind of integral part of the storytelling that ties many of these tiers of creativity together, in turn directly undercutting the movie’s climax by relying so heavily on it for the emotional plausibility of the audience. All of this pales in comparison, however, to the desperation of the dialogue, which feel like the worst aspects of the aforementioned love-letter to cinema that I praised in visual accompaniment. This leads to characters like Toby Jones’ Norman, who I feel is the Morpheus of this established world, depositing lines that feel emphasized for marketing trailers or Oscars movie montages conveying the magic of the screen. Very few of the conversations feel cloaked in the kind of authenticity that allowed me to get lost in the shallowness of their murky, mundane waters, with characters too convoluted with writer’s words to ever feel human.

OVERALL
“Empire of Light” is one overtly convoluted and shallow surrendering to academy awards appeal that leaves its heart in the dark of many compelling conversations. Though Colman’s talents keep the film grounded with a much-needed boost of humanity, and Deakins’ luster behind the lens enchants its elegance, the complete lack of subtlety leaves its magic for cinema tangled in the many strings of storytelling it forcefully ties itself to, leaving this empire caved in by the weight of its massive undertaking.

My Grade: 5/10 or D+