Fallen ‘Empire’
Someone should have told director Sam Mendes his funding isn’t under threat. One movie would have been fine.
Empire of LIght
Director: Sam Mendes • Writer: Sam Mendes
Starring: Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Tom Brooke, Tanya Moodie, Hannah Onslow, Crystal Clarke
UK • 1hr 55mins
Opens Hong Kong March 2 • IIB
Grade: C
I may be blaspheming to say it, but… Is Sam Mendes really the genius we think he is? Ever since he bounded onto the stage to collect a best picture (!) Oscar for American Beauty (!!) in 1999 it’s just been assumed that he’s a master. Go back to that film now – never mind the Kevin Spacey (!!!) part – and its flaws become glaringly obvious. It just doesn’t hold up. And there are lots of great parts of Revolutionary Road, Jarhead and 1917 (even with its kinda sorta gimmicky oner status), but only Road to Perdition and Skyfall really work from end-to-end. And when Roger Deakins is your DOP on five of nine films, something’s got to be okay FFS. The less said about Spectre the better.
So is anyone really surprised that Empire of Light is a bit of a hot mess? It’s handsomely mounted and regal and respectful and all that – and every corner of the old movie house a lot of the action takes place in is glowingly shot by … checks notes … Deakins, but it’s a simultaneously manic and inert piece of filmmaking that isn’t quite sure what it wants to say or what it wants to be about. When the most memorable thing about your movie is Olivia Colman giving Mr Darcy a handie, you’ve got problems.
We don’t know what we’re watching either
Hilary Small (Colman) is a solitary, lonely woman working at a seaside Margate movie theatre in 1981 England. She’s recovering from some kind of psychological break that she lies to her doctor about and is having a fling with the theatre manager Donald Ellis (Colin Firth). When one of the staff doesn’t show up – again – Donald hires Black, aspiring architect Stephen (Micheal Ward, Small Axe: Lovers Rock) to replace him. Stephen sparks something in Hilary and before you can say “race riot” they strike up an unlikely romance. The beginning of the end comes when Hilary decides she’s so happy she doesn’t need her meds, and her moods start to swing violently. Fellow theatre grunt Neil (Tom Brooke, Preacher) gives Stephen the vaguely tragic backstory – something about men – before she sabotages Donald’s big Chariots of Fire night. But they have the magic of the movies to guide them through their struggles. Da fuq?
So let’s recap. What we’ve got here is 1) a White Palace type romance about a younger man and an older woman, 2) an examination of a woman struggling with mental health issues and a the pros and cons of the chemistry managing them, 3) an exploration of Thatcher’s UK and the race relations disaster it wrought, and finally 4) a paean to the movies à la Cinema Paradiso. Have I got that right? Has anyone reminded Mendes that he or his films have won 12 Oscars, 17 BAFTAs, and eight Golden Globes (for what any of them are worth) so he doesn’t need to worry about not getting produced again? He didn’t need to make four films in one.
And that’s Empire of Light’s biggest flaw, among many. Then again, judging from the half-baked ideas and character sketches in the alleged script maybe Mendes just got bored with each element as he wove it into the larger narrative? Colman does her damnedest to make Hilary a complete character but when her vitriolic man-bashing comes storming in from nowhere all it does is make you wonder what the rest of the story there is. No matter how often Stephen points out the inequality he faces to Hilary, he never (or rarely) uses the words racism. Huh? And when Hilary musters up the fortitude to start living again, on her own, she does it by asking theatre projectionist Norman (Toby Jones) to “Show me a film. Any film.” She does this at Stephen’s suggestion because the magic of the light beam and strangers with you and blah blah blah, but we’re supposed to believe she’s never seen a movie. Even though she works in a cinema? Sure, Jan. It’s as if Mendes were an unfocused child who got bored with toy A, dumped it and moved on to another, three times in a row. For Mendes stans only. — DEK