Empire Of Light (2023) - Movie Review

Well, we seem to have found my limit when it comes to movies about the magic of movies. Following up his one-shot-trick feature 1917 (and bringing back DP Roger Deakins and editor Lee Smith), Sam Mendes has decided to get in on the recent trend of storied filmmakers tipping their hats to the art form they exist in. But where directors like Steven Spielberg and George Miller and even Ti West had a sturdy head on their shoulders when tackling that level of idealism, what Mendes and company have cooked up here is… well, cooked.

The story revolves around the Empire, a cinema on the British south coast, and the people who work there, primarily middle manager Hilary (Olivia Colman) and new employee Stephen (Micheal Ward). It’s presented like a workplace sitcom, following the social misadventures of these quirky people at their place of employment, but with prestige production values. Said production values are solid (Deakins’ cinematography is as gorgeous as ever, ditto Lee Smith’s editing, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross do well with the soundtrack), but the tone starts at an odd place and then continues to find new odd places to occupy throughout.

Now, the setting itself, I actually quite like; beyond the mere familiarity of a brick-and-mortar cinema, it brought back some fond memories of when I did work experience at a cinema myself. This would’ve been around 2015, and the main reason I remember it being that year specifically is because cleaning up after the sessions for Home only made me loathe that film even more than just watching it did. The sitcom-esque atmosphere still feels off, but I can see potential in a backdrop like this, especially for a film meant to espouse about the magic of going to a place like this for a cinematic experience.

However, what the film actually says about that experience is… underwhelming, to put it lightly. Most of the sentiments come from Toby Jones as the projectionist, and a lot of what he says about light and the way our eyes allow for the illusion of movement that make moving pictures possible manages to pale in comparison to that viral AMC ad featuring Nicole Kidman. At best, it’s described just as escapism, where you lose yourself among the crowd in their seats and get away from the real world’s bullshit for a time, which ends up being so vague that it could be swapped out for any other form of escapism and it would still fit.

And at worst… well, there’s how the film shows the aforementioned real-world bullshit that makes the magic of the cinema so appealing. And it manages to be nightmarishly ineffective on two separate fronts, and they both have to do with the main characters. With Stephen, we see him having to deal with racism at the hands of local skinheads, and the dialogue he gives in relation to that gets really fucking bleak… and yet not that much is said about racism as a societal problem. In the conversations between him and Hilary, the dialogue devolves into the “white person discovers racism for the first time” cliché that is associated with the fluffiest of Oscar bait ‘relevant’ movies. And when tied to the larger conceit about cinema, it manages to say less than the parallel discussions of the contemporaneous audience for 2 tone music and how it unites Black reggae fans and white punk kids. This is in spite of how sparsely that idea crops up to begin with.

But that is somehow less embarrassing than what we get from Hilary, as it’s when her mental health issues take the spotlight that the film’s tone really starts to go haywire. The depiction the film gives of her dealing with Bipolar disorder initially shows some good footing, pre-empting the problematic idea that her suddenly deciding to stop taking her meds is a good move, but then proceeds to show her increasingly volatile breakdowns (in public) as spectacle.

The way her relationships are framed (not just with Stephen, but also the worryingly questionable consent of her affair with Colin Firth’s Donald, her boss) is like if someone watched the diner conversation from Silver Linings Playbook, and thought that it should have been more skeevy in its juxtaposition of sex and mental illness. And when it gets to the point where she takes to the stage before a gala premiere of Chariots Of Fire, it gives the same feeling as watching Lauryn Hill perform I Gotta Find Peace Of Mind on MTV Unplugged: Extreme discomfort from seeing a public breakdown and being expected to find some form of entertainment from it.

Look, I can understand going for this particular kind of story and setting at this specific time in history, where the future of physical cinemas has been thrown in doubt not just by the effects of the pandemic, but also by the preceding ubiquity of streaming services. Wanting to create a story about the importance of these places, even with more accessible alternatives out there, isn’t an inherently bad idea. But the execution here is baffling from end to end, from its mismatch between tone and presentation, to its abysmal handling of sensitive subjects, to its utter lack of insight into cinema as art to emotionally engage with. It tries to extoll cinema, particularly going out to the cinema, as a spiritual necessity (which I agree with in principle), but only ends up revealing itself, and cinema by proxy, to be vapid and disposable. It only serves to make movies look worse by being associated with it, and as someone who unironically believes in movie magic, I’m not okay with that.