Empire of Light
A love story set in and around an old cinema on the South Coast of England in the 1980s.
- Released: 2022-11-12
- Runtime: 115 minutes
- Genre: Drama, Romance
- Stars: Olivia Colman, Colin Firth, Tanya Moodie, Hannah Onslow, Crystal Clarke, Sara Stewart, Adrian McLoughlin, Spike Leighton, Ashleigh Reynolds, Mark Goldthorp, Dylan Blore, Eliza Glock, Tim Samuels, Jamie Whitlow, Dougie Boyall, D.J. Bailey, George Whitehead
- Director: Sam Mendes
Comments
- vincent0860712 - 9 May 2024
Some good ingredients, but sadly the whole is less than the sum of its parts
Despite the mixed critical reception and failed attempts at getting Oscar recognitions (aside from an admittedly deserving Best Cinematography nod), I was still fairly interested in seeing Empire of Light. Apart from my adoration of "cinema love letter" films that pay tribute towards different aspects of cinema, another attraction I had towards Empire of Light was director/writer Sam Mendes, having loved/liked many of his past works such as Road to Perdition, Skyfall, 1917, or American Beauty.
As someone who finds films celebrating the joy of going to the movies or making a film easy to please me, it gives me no pleasure to report that Empire of Light left me underwhelmed. I appreciated the film's good intentions and a few individual elements, but the end result left me wanting. In a year where there were two other "cinema love letter" films released in 2022, where Steven Spielberg's infectious passion for filmmaking completely shines throughout The Fabelmans, while Damien Chazelle's problematic but occasionally brilliant Babylon nails its theme of the lasting legacy of cinema most notably during a monologue and the ending, Empire of Light didn't make me feel any of the cinema magic I got from those two other films. Is it one of the worst films of 2022? No, Empire of Light still has its fair share of redeeming or even great qualities, and it's far from being a disaster on the same level as Don't Worry Darling, The Lair, Moonfall, Panama, or Morbius. My most disappointing of the year? Probably, especially given the potential promised by the director and its topic that should have been right up my alley.
Starting with my positives towards Empire of Light, Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward are the two biggest standout performances, both nailing the humanity struggles of their roles. Their chemistry provides most of the film's warmth.
There were bits and pieces where the feeling of movie magic shined through the film, such as the excitement Micheal Ward felt after he successfully switched projection reels in the middle of a screening, or Olivia Colman's solo movie experience.
Roger Deakins is one of the best cinematographers working today, his work on Empire of Light is once again breathtaking and is the only Oscar nod it deserved (and thankfully earned), with the fireworks sequence and the way Deakins made a small candy booth look wonderous standing out in my mind.
I was initially unsure about how the music score would work without Mendes' usual collaborator Thomas Newman, but Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is a surprisingly good replacement filling in for Newman.
Unfortunately, that's where my positives towards Empire of Light end. My biggest problem towards the film is that its main ingredients may taste good individually, but they are put together in a way that creates a taste lacking cohesion. (To put it this way, gummy bears, spaghetti, and sushi may taste good on their own, but if you try to mesh them together into one dish without even trying to make each flavor work well with each other, the results will most likely come off as inedible with all the different flavors conflicting with each other.) Empire of Light tries to deal with mental illness, racism in 1980s UK, and age gap romantic relationships, and in the end it tried to do too much but ended up biting off way more than it could chew, not to mention that all these potentially interesting themes seem to compromise each other and make the film feel more thematically unfocused rather than thematically rich. (Steven Spielberg proved with The Fabelmans that it IS possible to make a "cinema love letter film" that also tackles serious topics, and he made it work by focusing on just one theme of divorce, while the theme related to filmmaking by making the protagonist's films the one thing he remained in control of when he couldn't save his parents' marriage. On the other hand the themes in Empire of Light don't really highlight the escapism cinema provides for people's daily troubles.) I have great respect towards Sam Mendes as a director/writer, but I felt like with Empire of Light he wasn't up to the job at juggling all these different themes into a cohesive narrative, while also completely forgetting about his main intention of paying tribute of cinema workers in the first place.
Aside from the beforementioned scenes of Ward changing film reels and Coleman's solo moviegoing, for a film that's supposed to be a love letter for cinemas, Empire of Light has probably the most lifeless and depressing depiction of going to a cinema or working there I've seen portrayed in a film so far. The cinema workers in Empire of Light don't look like they have passion towards their jobs or film in general, which in turn makes the movie's intentions as a love letter for cinema a bit questionable for me. As a matter of fact, the Empire cinema theater in this film feels more like a backdrop than a fully lived-in place that you could replace the cinema with any other workplace, and it wouldn't make much of a difference, since it is barely shown how the power of cinema allow these workers to bond together as a community or how they view movies as a form of escapism from their daily troubles.
I usually respect films that feel personal to a filmmaker's own experiences, but in Empire of Light's case it actually feels like it's so personal and mostly off-topic towards film that I began to question its qualification as a "love letter to cinemas," which is summed up by the film concluding not with something related to film but a poem.
Overall, despite a few excellent aspects Empire of Light was a underwhelming film that didn't make me feel much moviegoing magic, and it saddens me to say that it is probably my biggest disappointment of 2022. 5/10. - bk753 - 9 November 2023
Remarkably average...
Olivia Colman is amazing and I could watch her read a diner menu and be transfixed. The entire supporting cast (especially Michael Ward) is fine and capable, but the story here is less than stellar in light of the weighty subjects it attempts to tackle while claiming movies to be an "escape" from the world.
Neither mental health issues nor systemic racism can be salved by an evening at the movies and neither topic was properly explored in a movie where they played such a pivotal role. Conversely, the film overplayed its unlikely romance, where it seemed forced and unnecessary. In the end, one wonders what the movie was really supposed to be about to begin with. I didn't hate it, but give me Sam Mendes directing Olivia Colman and the bar is set far above the height this movie was able to reach..
