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‘Empire of Light’ Review: They Found It at the Movies

Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward pursue a bittersweet workplace romance in Sam Mendes’s look back at Britain in the early 1980s.

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In a scene from the film, Olivia Colman’s character Hilary looks through a pane of glass, with a line of lights reflected above her head.

By A.O. Scott

“Empire of Light” takes place in and around an old movie palace in a British seaside town. This cinema, which is called the Empire, is more than a mere setting: it’s the movie’s center of gravity, its soul, its governing metaphor and reason for being.

In the early 1980s, the Empire has fallen on hard times, rather like the global power evoked by its name. The sun hasn’t quite set, but the upstairs screens are now permanently dark, and a once-sumptuous lounge on the top floor is frequented mainly by pigeons. The public still shows up to buy popcorn and candy, and to see films like “The Blues Brothers,” “Stir Crazy” and “All That Jazz,” but the mood is one of quietly accepted defeat. Even the light looks tired.

That light is also beautiful, thanks to the unrivaled cinematographer Roger Deakins , whose images impart a tone of gentle nostalgia. It’s possible to look back fondly on a less-than-golden age, and Sam Mendes (“Revolutionary Road,” “1917”), the writer and director, casts an affectionate gaze on the Empire, its employees, and the drab, sometimes brutal realities of Thatcher-era Britain.

“Empire of Light” has a sad story to tell, one that touches on mental illness, sexual exploitation, racist violence and other grim facts of life. But Mendes isn’t a realist in the mode of Mike Leigh or Ken Loach. The period-appropriate British movies that find their way to the Empire’s screens are “Gregory’s Girl” and “Chariots of Fire,” and Mendes borrows some of their sweet, gentle humor and heartfelt humanist charm.

Olivia Colman plays Hilary, the Empire’s duty manager, who oversees a motley squad of cinema soldiers. There is a nerdy guy, a post-punk girl and a grumpy projectionist. They are soon joined by Stephen (Micheal Ward), a genial young man whose college plans are on hold.

Hilary and her boss, Mr. Ellis (Colin Firth), are carrying on a desultory affair. For her, the rushed encounters in his office are part of a dreary workplace routine, evidence of an ongoing malaise. Things could always be worse, and for Hilary, they have been. She has recently returned to work after spending time in a mental hospital after a breakdown and takes lithium to maintain her equilibrium.

Stephen’s arrival jolts her out of her torpor, which is both exciting and risky. He seems more open to experience, more capable of happiness, than anyone else in this grubby little city, and he and Hilary strike up a friendship that turns into more. His encounters with hostile skinheads and bigoted customers open Hilary’s eyes to the pervasiveness of racial prejudice. Together they nurse a wounded pigeon back to health.

For a while, their romance unfolds in a quiet, quotidian rhythm that allows you to appreciate Colman and Ward’s fine-grained performances. “What are days?” the poet Philip Larkin asked — he’s a favorite of Hilary’s, along with W.H. Auden — and his answer was both somber and sublime. “Days are where we live.” The daily rituals of work at the Empire, and the pockets of free time that open up within it, add a dimension of understated enchantment, as if a touch of big-screen magic found its way into the break room, the concession stand and the box office.

It’s inevitable that the spell will break, and when it does, “Empire of Light” falters. Mendes raises the stakes and accelerates the plot, pushing Hilary and Stephen through a series of crises that weigh the movie down with earnest self-importance. A film that had seemed interested in the lives and feelings of its characters, and in an unlikely but touching relationship between two people at odds with the world around them, turns into a movie with Something to Say.

The message is muddled and soft, like a Milk Dud at the bottom of the box, and the movie chews on it for quite a while. “Empire of Light” arrives at its emotional terminus long before it actually ends. Things keep happening, as if Mendes were trying to talk himself and us through ideas that hadn’t been fully worked out. There isn’t really much insight to be gleaned on the subjects of mental illness, racial politics, middle age or work, though an earnest effort is made to show concern about all of them.

What “Empire of Light” really wants to be about are the pleasures of ’80s pop music, fine English poetry and, above all, movies. Like everyone else at the Empire, the grumpy projectionist takes a liking to Stephen, and shows him how to work the machinery, eliciting exclamations of wonder from the young man, and also from old-timers in the audience who might remember the vanished sights and sounds of celluloid. The velvet ropes and plush seats, the beam of light and the whirring — it’s all lovely and bittersweet to contemplate.

Movies have always been more than a source of comfort: They have the power to disturb, to seduce, to provoke and to enrage. None of that really interests Mendes here, even though the story of Hilary and Stephen might have benefited from a tougher, less sentimental telling.

Empire of Light Rated R. Sex and violence, just like in the movies. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Empire of Light

A drama about the power of human connection during turbulent times, set in an English coastal town in the early 1980s. A drama about the power of human connection during turbulent times, set in an English coastal town in the early 1980s. A drama about the power of human connection during turbulent times, set in an English coastal town in the early 1980s.

Olivia Colman
Micheal Ward
Colin Firth
172 User reviews
211 Critic reviews
54 Metascore
3 wins & 39 nominations total

Donald Ellis

Rosemary Bates

Brenda Ellis

Doctor Laird

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Trivia The actual Dreamland cinema in Margate (which stood in for the Empire cinema in this film) was opened in 1923. It changed hands several times during its lifetime and finally closed for good in 2007. It still stands, although empty, because it is a listed building and so cannot be demolished without parliamentary approval. The block of flats where Steven lives with his mother is not an optical effect: it is really is that close to the building (with Margate railway station being just 100 yards up the road).
Goofs During a scene that takes place in 1981, Janine mentions she heard about a song from SPIN magazine. Spin magazine was not founded until 1985.

Stephen : Amazin'.

Norman : It is amazing. Because it's just static frames, with darkness in between. But there's a little flaw in your optic nerve so that if I run the film at 24 frames per second you don't see the darkness.

Stephen : Wow.

Norman : It's called the Phi Phenomenon. Viewing static images rapidly in succession crates an illusion of motion. Illusion of life.

Connections Featured in Amanda the Jedi Show: This Movie was Shockingly Terrible - Best and Worst of TIFF 2022 (2022)
Soundtracks Asteroid - Pearl & Dean Written & Performed by Pete Moore Published by Sony Music Publishing Courtesy of Pearl & Dean

User reviews 172

Feb 10, 2023
How long is Empire of Light? Powered by Alexa
December 9, 2022 (United States)
United Kingdom
United States
Imperio de luz
Dreamland Cinema, 52 Marine Terrace, Margate CT9 1XP, UK (exterior scenes)
BBC Legends
Neal Street Productions
Searchlight Pictures
See more company credits at IMDbPro
Dec 11, 2022
$11,395,604

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Runtime 1 hour 55 minutes
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‘Empire of Light’ Review: Do Yourself a Favor and See Sam Mendes’ Ode to Movies on the Big Screen

What better definition of 'movie magic' can one find than the sight of Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward's faces, reflecting their feelings for one another?

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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In the era when content is king, Sam Mendes still believes in moving pictures. “ Empire of Light ” is the proof. While the world was in lockdown these past couple years, Mendes let his imagination run to his happy place: a grand old English movie palace he dubbed the Empire Cinema. Thousands pass through its art deco doors seeking escapism, but Mendes is more interested in the employees — the projectionist, the ticket takers, the box office attendant and so forth — whose stories, he senses, are every bit as interesting as the ones they show. And so he put them up on-screen where they belong.

Popular on Variety

The pandemic compelled so many of us to look in the mirror and pose existential questions about what we were doing and why. Mendes clearly had a lot on his mind, too, from race relations to mental health, and in the Empire, he found a container to explore them all. Too many issues in too neat a space, some might argue, but better that than the opposite. “Empire of Light” is what I think of as a “snow globe movie,” the sort where everything looks perfect, to the point of artificiality: The camera doesn’t wobble; the light is just right. If you were to walk the empty aisles, your shoes wouldn’t stick to the floor. On the soundtrack, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross supply a lovely music-box score. But even within that aesthetic, there’s room for reality — and the deeper you get into Mendes’ story, the tougher and more unpredictable it gets.

Meanwhile, the too-tidy vibe results in part from Mendes’ ongoing collaboration with DP Roger Deakins, who’s a master to be sure, but no longer someone who works on the intimate scale this project seems to want. The duo shoot in hi-def digital widescreen, which feels like the right fit during scenes where “Empire of Light” aims to emphasize the sheer grandeur of the cinema’s design — as in the magical scene where Hilary first takes Stephen upstairs to see the empty ballroom and unused screens — but feels less intimate a few scenes later, when they share New Year’s Eve on the roof and Hilary boldly steals a kiss.

The budding romance between them is surprising for any number of reasons: the age difference, the racial attitudes suggested in the town around them, the fact that Stephen loves movies, whereas Hilary’s never bothered to watch one in all the years she’s worked at the Empire (no prizes for predicting that will change before the end credits). Hilary favors poetry to film and has no friends to speak of, whereas Stephen still lives with his mom and seems relatively naive on certain subjects. “No one’s going to give you the life you want,” she tells him. “You have to go out and get it.” In other areas, he has to educate her (and a few of us), as in a valuable walk-and-talk session following a run-in with a racist customer.

Hilary doesn’t seem to have any hangups about dating a Black man, but Stephen knows the dangers, removing his arm from around Hilary’s shoulder when a white man boards the bus. Readers probably needn’t be reminded that such issues have hardly gone away, though they might not recall how tensions boiled up in 1981 England (obviously the reason Mendes chose to set the film then), with urban race riots in some cities and National Front mobs in others. “Empire of Light” climaxes early as that situation gets out of hand, trapping everyone we care about inside the lobby.

Reviewed at Telluride Film Festival, Sept. 3, 2022. Also in Toronto Film Festival. Running time: 119 MIN.

Production: (U.K.-U.S.) A Searchlight Pictures presentation. Producers: Pippa Harris, Sam Mendes. Executive producers: Michael Lerman, Julie Pastor.
Crew: Director, writer: Sam Mendes. Camera: Roger Deakins. Editor: Lee Smith. Music: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross.
With: Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Tom Brooke, Tanya Moodie, Hannah Onslow, Crystal Clarke, Toby Jones, Colin Firth

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Empire of Light review: Olivia Colman shines in Sam Mendes' 1980s ode to cinema

The Oscar winner stars alongside newcomer Micheal Ward in the 1917 director's sweetly observed drama.

Leah Greenblatt is the critic at large at Entertainment Weekly , covering movies, music, books, and theater. She is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and has been writing for EW since 2004.

empire of light movie review roger ebert

For nearly as long as there have been movies, there have been love letters to the art of it on screen, from Singin' in the Rain and Cinema Paradiso to La La Land . Sam Mendes' Empire of Light , which premiered yesterday at the Telluride Film Festival, is one of those mash notes: a tender, meandering ode to cinema that also plays as an unlikely romance, a misty snapshot of a bygone era, and an often-incandescent character study. That's in part because Mendes wrote it specifically with his star Olivia Colman — an actress who seems incapable of giving a clumsy or conventional performance — in mind. She's Hilary Small, a woman who works at a seaside cineplex on the south coast of England at the turn of the early 1980s. It's the age of The Blues Brothers and All That Jazz and Sunday matinees, when going to see a film was still a social occasion (albeit one accessible to anyone with £1.50 for a ticket; seniors are 75 pence.)

The grand old Empire, nestled so close to the waterfront that sand and seabirds nearly come up to the front doors, is an only slightly decrepit temple of plush swirly carpets, brass fittings, and attendants in crisp polyester uniforms. Hilary is considerably older than most of her coworkers — aside from a persnickety but kind projectionist played by the great Toby Jones — though she seems just right for the priggish manager, Mr. Ellis ( Colin Firth ), a man who likes the way she pre-warms his office slippers in the morning and submits to being occasionally bent over his desk for sex. When she's not selling concessions or sweeping up spilled popcorn in the aisles at work, she drinks wine in the bathtub and eats her Christmas dinners for one, waiting for the moments when Mr. Ellis will deign to shine his light her way.

The arrival of a new hire named Stephen ( Lovers Rock 's Micheal Ward) hardly seems like the thing to change that; he's too young and brash and handsome to even register some middle-aged lady. But he's also Black in a time and a place where just walking down the street can turn into a gauntlet of spittle-flecked cruelty and physical abuse, and he senses something kindred in Hilary. Soon they become improbable friends and then lovers, though their sexual connection feels more like a manifestation of their mutual loneliness than anything remotely sustainable in the real world.

And it isn't sustainable, of course, particularly when Hilary's deeper issues begin to surface (there's a reason she's on lithium, even though she hates the way it numbs her), and Stephen starts making plans for a life beyond the ticket booth. That, and the rising racial and economic tensions of Thatcher England, bode several darker turns in Mendes' script, though his narrative often plays less like a conventional drama than a memory palace, its rhythms slowed to match the tempos of this sleepy town. In that way, Empire can seem like a minor work for the director of two Bond movies, American Beauty , and one of the most ambitious war films in recent history .

But Colman, her eyes darting between hope and devastation, is so lit-up and specific (and funny , a quality that doesn't seem to get mentioned enough) that she lifts nearly every scene. And the 24-year-old relative newcomer Ward, who looks a little like a young Sidney Poitier, is remarkably warm and grounded in a part that could easily have been swallowed by the Oscar winner playing across from him. The legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins — who last won an Oscar for Mendes' 1917 — gives their beach trips and late-night bus rides a suffused glow, and even in a movie as modest as Empire , Mendes fills out the corners of his story with carefully observed details and eccentric characters, weaving them into a sort of sweetly self-contained whole. We can't live our lives sitting in the dark, he seems to say, but movies can still save us, at least a little bit. Grade: B+

Empire Of Light Review

09 Jan 2023

Empire Of Light

Sam Mendes ’ last film, the one-shot war epic 1917 , was a tribute to his grandfather, a World War I veteran. Empire Of Light , his latest, is an understated, 1980s-set drama set in a creaking old seaside picturehouse — a handbrake turn in every way. But there is a personal element to this storytelling, too: Mendes has spoken about this being a tribute to his mother, who suffered from mental illness. The result is a period melodrama which tries earnestly to be many things at once, not all successfully: a mismatched romance, a portrait of a nervous breakdown, a snapshot of Thatcher’s racially charged Britain, and a love letter, of sorts, to cinema.

When we meet Hilary ( Olivia Colman ), she is a listless cinema worker engaging in a suffocatingly unromantic extramarital affair with the manager (played by Colin Firth , as a kind of anti-Darcy). It slowly emerges that Hilary has had a history of mental-health issues, and moves through the world numbed by antidepressants. It’s yet another extraordinary, soul-shattering performance from Colman, even if sometimes Hilary’s story falls prey to melodrama’s lazier impulses; occasionally you can feel the buttons being pushed.

As Hilary's health dominated proceedings, the promise of a Cinema Paradiso -esque elegy starts to fade.

Then along comes Stephen ( Micheal Ward ), who injects some light into Hilary’s bleak existence. Though he is something of a manic pixie dream boy — he nurses a pigeon back to health, a metaphor about as subtle as a punch in the face — and feels clumsily shoehorned in as a means of teaching Racism 101 for guileless white characters, he is at least charismatically played by Ward. It’s an impressive calling-card for future leading-man roles.

As Hilary’s health dominates proceedings, the promise of a Cinema Paradiso -esque elegy, implied by the title (and marketing), starts to fade. Often the cinema feels like a supporting character, an ancillary element relegated to mere window-dressing. For a cinematic love letter, the characters seem curiously incurious about the films being shown; only Toby Jones’ projectionist teeters towards cinephile territory.

But what window-dressing! With typically skilful cinematography from Roger Deakins and period-accurate production design from Mark Tildesley, Mendes summons a very specific time and place, one that will be instantly familiar to British people of a certain age bracket: a time of economic pessimism, frilly curtains, and unflattering NHS glasses. The filmmakers find a strange beauty in this bleakness, especially in the grand, old-world nobility of the cinema itself: two of the screens are closed, seemingly condemned, and Hilary and Stephen forge a secretive romance in an empty ballroom which is made to seem like some lost archeological treasure. In the wake of the pandemic, it arouses a real sense of cinemagoing’s inherent fragility.

At its best, it is genuinely evocative, and while the script (by Mendes, his first as solo screenwriter) is patchy, it also wisely leaves the camera — plus Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ delicate, pensive score — to do a lot of the talking. As a whole, it doesn’t quite cohere, but you can at least feel the sincere, sentimental intent with which it’s made.

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Movie Reviews

Movie review: 'empire of light'.

Bob Mondello

"Empire of Light" is director Sam Mendes' tribute to cinema. Actress Olivia Colman plays a slowly unraveling employee at Britain's Empire Theater in the 1980s.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Cinematic nostalgia comes in all shapes and sizes this holiday season. Steven Spielberg's latest movie, "The Fabelmans," is about how he became a filmmaker. The comedy "Babylon" will soon offer a portrait of Hollywood in the Roaring '20s. And today we have "Empire Of Light," which critic Bob Mondello says is set almost entirely inside a grand old movie palace.

BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: When it opened in the 1920s, the seaside Empire theater must have been fabulous - towering art deco sign facing the boardwalk; a grand double staircase in the lobby; burnished, curved wood on the walls; brass fittings polished till they gleam like gold to match the gold swirls in the burgundy carpet.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "EMPIRE OF LIGHT")

TOBY JONES: (As Norman) Look around you. This whole place is for people who want to escape, people who don't belong anywhere else.

MONDELLO: And that's just the lobby. In the auditorium, acres of seats face a velvet curtain that parts to reveal a majestic screen.

MICHEAL WARD: (As Stephen) Wow.

MONDELLO: It still has the power to awe. But this is the Maggie Thatcher '80s. And the films on the marquee now are "The Blues Brothers" and "All That Jazz," two titles because the grand old Empire theater fell on hard times and got chopped into a multiplex. But folks still come. And Hilary, played by Olivia Colman, still forces a smile through her numbness while selling them popcorn until the arrival of a new employee, a student played by Micheal Ward, with an upbeat, Sidney Poitier vibe. They strike up a friendship, and suddenly, she's full of life, encouraging him.

WARD: (As Stephen) They turned me down the first time.

OLIVIA COLMAN: (As Hilary) To study what?

WARD: (As Stephen) Architecture.

COLMAN: (As Hilary) Oh, that would be wonderful.

WARD: (As Stephen) Yeah.

COLMAN: (As Hilary) You have to try again.

WARD: (As Stephen) Yeah, maybe.

COLMAN: (As Hilary) Well, you can't just give up. Stephen, don't let them tell you what you can or can't do. No one's going to give you the life you want. You have to go out and get it.

MONDELLO: Excellent advice, though, of course, she's not done that herself. And when her moods turn erratic, it becomes clear why. That numbness she had before? Medicated. Stephen's there and responsible, but when she's off her meds and creates a scene...

WARD: (As Stephen) Hilary, are you all right?

COLMAN: (As Hilary) Tell me truthfully. Did I humiliate myself?

WARD: (As Stephen) What?

COLMAN: (As Hilary) Tell me. Did I?

MONDELLO: There's only so much cover he can provide.

WARD: (As Stephen) No, it wasn't humiliating. It was just intense. To be honest, I thought you were a bit of a hero.

COLMAN: (As Hilary) That's very nice of you. Hard to believe.

MONDELLO: Filmmaker Sam Mendes reportedly built "Empire Of Light" around Colman, and eyes darting, smile tentative, she delivers for him. The director also built the film around his setting. And the Empire theater doesn't let him down either, a movie palace of the sort that audiences have increasingly been giving up for streaming services despite the everyday miracle they deliver.

JONES: (As Norman) Film - it's just static frames with darkness in between.

MONDELLO: Toby Jones' projectionist musing to Stephen about the magic they work in this place.

JONES: (As Norman) There's a little flaw in your optic nerve. So if I run the film at 24 frames per second, it creates an illusion of motion, an illusion of life. So you don't see the darkness.

MONDELLO: Darkness - what darkness? For Mendes, darkness is what you get when you turn off the TV. At the cinema, he sees, as will audiences, an empire of light. I'm Bob Mondello.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Review: Movies may be magic, but Sam Mendes’ ‘Empire of Light’ can’t conjure the illusion

A woman looks to the side and smiles as bright lights shine in the background

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In “Empire of Light,” Sam Mendes casts a nostalgic eye toward the movies. Like several other auteurs this winter season , Mendes has crafted what could be considered a “love letter to cinema” (see also: Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans,” Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon”), but “Empire of Light” is less of a mash note to moviemaking than a tribute to the movie theater itself, that cathedral of collective dreams borne by a single beam of light.

The Empire in question is the fictional Empire Cinema in Margate, a coastal city in England; the year is 1980 and the story concerns the unlikely, and complicated, friendship between Hilary ( Olivia Colman ), the duty manager at the Empire, and Stephen (Micheal Ward), the new ticket taker. Movies are their business, and the backdrop to their relationship, which blooms among the popcorn and candy and takes flight in the Empire’s abandoned upstairs club room, a once-glorious space now serving as a pigeon roost.

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The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the CDC and local health officials .

“Empire of Light” is beautifully shot by legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins , who contrasts the blueish seaside exterior light with the warm, rich interior of the Empire outfitted in golds and reds, the staff clad in aubergine. It is a gorgeous film, at once airy and earthy, the proud, yet crumbling glamour of the Empire placing us in this moment in time.

Funnily enough, “Empire of Light” shares some story DNA with another workplace movie that takes place at an “Empire”: “Empire Records,” that mid-‘90s romp about a group of misfit teens working at a record store. Both films take place at a business dedicated to a physical space where fans come to worship their art form of choice, and where the employees form an oddball family, contending with their various personal issues. In “Records,” a corporate takeover threatens obsolescence, and though that hasn’t quite arrived yet in “Light,” it’s clear Mendes, setting the film four decades ago, is reckoning with the possible extinction of the movie theater in his own way.

As to the employee issues, Mendes, writing alone for the first time ( he previously co-wrote “1917” ), saddles Hilary and Stephen with some heavy-duty personal obstacles that reflect the social plagues of the time. Hilary contends with an ongoing mental health crisis stemming from gender-based trauma (see the “woman = woe man” graffiti on the walls of her squalid apartment), while Stephen, the son of Caribbean immigrants, has to shoulder the burden of racism building in Thatcher’s England, where skinheads are emboldened to attack. At one point, he despairingly lists a spate of racist incidents to Hillary after an ugly encounter with an aggressive patron. It feels less like realistic dialogue and more like Mendes attempting to set the context.

The story feels like a mashing together of these social ills with various references to influential films of the era (“Stir Crazy,” “Chariots of Fire,” “Raging Bull”), music (The English Beat, Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens), and a few favorite poets (W.H. Auden and Philip Larkin), while the cinema setting offers the opportunity to wax poetically about the magic of projected celluloid ( Toby Jones plays the wise projectionist Norman). But Mendes ends up making the misguided, and flat, argument that movies can treat mental illness, and ska music can fight racism.

For movie lovers and appreciators of the experience of 35-millimeter film projected in a beautiful old movie house, it’s easy to understand where Mendes is coming from, and to agree with his assertions. But as a movie lover wanting to fall in love with a story, “Empire of Light” does not provide that experience. Deakins’ work is beautiful, Colman is incredible, and the role of Stephen proves to be a breakout for Ward. But the story is too scattershot and contrived for an audience to be swept away and moved in the same way that Colman finds herself swept away by the experience of the Peter Sellers classic “Being There.”

We don’t need someone to remind us that movies are magic by stating that up front, usually it’s the magic of storytelling itself that achieves that, which “Empire of Light” ultimately, and unfortunately, fumbles.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

‘Empire of Light’

Rated: R, for sexual content, language and brief violence Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes Playing: Starts Dec. 9 in general release

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Empire of Light

2022, Romance/Drama, 1h 59m

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Critics Consensus

Empire of Light contains some fine performances and a few flashes of brilliance, but this tribute to the magic of cinema is disappointingly mundane. Read critic reviews

Audience Says

Empire of Light 's involving story, beautiful cinematography, and great performances overshadow the movie's slow pace and occasionally scattered focus. Read audience reviews

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Empire of light videos, empire of light photos.

Set in an English seaside town in the early 1980s, EMPIRE OF LIGHT is a powerful and poignant story about human connection and the magic of cinema, from Academy Award®-winning director Sam Mendes.

Rating: R (Language|Brief Violence|Sexual Content)

Genre: Romance, Drama

Original Language: English

Director: Sam Mendes

Producer: Pippa Harris , Sam Mendes

Writer: Sam Mendes

Release Date (Theaters): Dec 9, 2022 wide

Release Date (Streaming): Feb 7, 2023

Box Office (Gross USA): $1.2M

Runtime: 1h 59m

Distributor: Searchlight Pictures

Production Co: Neal Street Productions, Searchlight Pictures

Sound Mix: Dolby Digital

Aspect Ratio: Scope (2.35:1)

Cast & Crew

Olivia Colman

Micheal Ward

Colin Firth

Crystal Clarke

Tanya Moodie

Hannah Onslow

Screenwriter

Pippa Harris

Michael Lerman

Executive Producer

Julie Pastor

Roger Deakins

Cinematographer

Film Editor

Trent Reznor

Original Music

Atticus Ross

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Empire of Light review – Sam Mendes’s sprawling love letter to cinema

Despite the best efforts of Olivia Colman and cinematographer Roger Deakins, the director’s first solo writing effort is uneven

T here are plenty of themes swimming around in Sam Mendes’s sprawling, uneven Empire of Light , but few coherent ideas linking them. Set in the 1980s, in the kind of pursed-lipped and sanctimonious British seaside town that wears its former glory like a long outdated party frock, the film awkwardly slings together mental health issues and racially motivated violence, then ties it up with a rather glib point about the unifying power of cinema.

Olivia Colman plays Hilary, a troubled front-of-house manager at a seafront picture palace, who forms a romantic bond with a much younger employee (Micheal Ward). Colman is a phenomenal talent and Ward shows potential, but even so, the relationship between them struggles to convince as anything more than a plot device. This is the first film that Mendes has directed from his own screenplay (he had a co-writing credit on 1917 ), and for all its visual flair, courtesy of veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins , there’s little to suggest that Mendes has the writing chops to match his directing skill.

In cinemas from 9 January

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“Empire of Light,” Reviewed: Sam Mendes’s Synthetic Paean to Movie Magic

By Richard Brody

Olivia Colman in “Empire of Light” smiling at her costar Micheal Ward.

The writer and director Sam Mendes’s new film, “Empire of Light,” centered on the employees of an English movie theatre in the early nineteen-eighties, belongs to a genre unto itself: cooking-show cinema. Mendes seems to have given himself a list of mandatory ingredients and develops the film to fit them all in, however clumsily. There’s no intrinsic problem with conspicuous contrivance or a willful cinematic collage, whether involving the Marx Brothers or the New Wave. The trouble with Mendes’s film is in the effort to combine the pieces in a way that feels natural, in an artifice that’s devised to be nearly invisible. It’s a synthetic that presents itself as organic. In the process, the film smothers its authentic parts, never lets its drama take root and grow, never lets its characters come to life.

Olivia Colman stars as Hilary Small, the so-called duty manager of a spectacularly appointed movie theatre in a provincial seaside town on the southern coast of England. (The movie was filmed at Margate.) She is on the cusp of middle age, and her solitude appears to weigh on her. She lives alone, she eats alone, she seems to have little social life outside of her cordial association with her colleagues. At the start of the action, just before Christmas, she has recently returned to work after a stay in a mental hospital; at her doctor’s office, she tells him that she’s feeling “numb,” which he attributes to the lithium that she takes. (She lies to him about having family and friends to talk to.)

Hilary is also having an affair, of sorts, with her boss, Mr. Ellis (Colin Firth), the theatre’s general manager, who is married. She’s a reader with a fund of poetry to quote, seemingly a literary person who appears out of place in her daily role overseeing ticket sales, dispensing popcorn and candy, cleaning the theatre, tidying Ellis’s office, and organizing the other half-dozen or so employees’ time and tasks. She doesn’t seem bored, she doesn’t seem miserable—she merely seems mechanical. Then Ellis hires a new employee to help with ticket sales and other practicalities, Stephen Murray (Micheal Ward), a cheerful and eager young man whose elegant wit and easy curiosity sets him apart from the others; he and Hilary become fast friends, and then lovers. (He’s the first to pursue the friendship; she’s the first to demonstrate romantic feelings.) Stephen harbors the unfulfilled ambition go to university to become an architect. Hilary encourages him to pursue his dream, and, thanks to him, she begins to come out of her shell.

Stephen is Black, a fact that’s of no significance among his white colleagues, who are friendly and welcoming, but one that proves to be of appalling importance in general. He is confronted in the theatre by a patron who makes racist remarks, and the town is infested with white supremacists who, emboldened by British nativist politicians and enraged by Black British people’s demands for equal rights, harass Stephen in the street and turn increasingly dangerous. Meanwhile, his relationship with Hilary begins to take a toll on both of them, as their co-workers begin to suspect something.

Hilary is reprising the kind of relationship that she and Ellis have had—not just one among colleagues but one between a supervisor and a subordinate. That—along with (perhaps) the racial difference, along with (perhaps) the age difference, along with (perhaps) the fact that Stephen is still grieving over a failed romantic relationship with another woman, along with (perhaps) his academic ambitions—comes between them and threatens to push Hilary into crisis mode. That crisis, a story of past troubles and past horrors, of a hard childhood and subsequent abuses, of thwarted dreams and stifled rage, is the emotional core of the film.

Hilary is something of a classic character: a sad sack. In American movies, a sad sack is a sociopath-in-waiting, a ticking time bomb preparing to explode, whereas a British sad sack is merely a human machine going through the motions of life, a ticking clock that is simply winding down. American society, thin on formalities, exerts little pressure on solitary characters, whereas British life, which is more formal and punctilious, may add structure to lives that otherwise have little of it. That’s where “Empire of Light” is at its best; in treating Hilary like a compressed figure, shaped from the outside by social forces, Mendes tries (and, to a limited extent, manages) to show not the character but the forces themselves, to show the mold into which the character has been pushed, deformed, tormented. But the dramatic result of showing the mold rather than the character is the lack of detail in characterization—which wouldn’t be an issue if the movie weren’t a character study.

Mendes builds the movie mainly in dialogue scenes that often start promisingly, that show his protagonists confiding and confessing, struggling to express themselves and beginning to find the strength to do so. But they are typically cut short (whether by Mendes’s editorial will or by the mere limit of his own screenwriterly imagination) once the scene dispenses the tidbits of information that fit into the tight dramatic mosaic. It’s a movie filled with its perhapses and its vaguenesses, and the characters turn up only enough cards to keep viewers guessing at the table. The movie plays ambiguously with Hilary’s illness, to significant symbolic ends but frustrating dramatic ones: Mendes suggests that it’s the unchallenged assumptions of social life, of gender relationships, that are sick—that what Hilary has endured is enough to depress and derange any woman sensitive enough to take stock of the dire situation. It’s a rhetorical notion that the film places alongside the overt racist pathologies afflicting England; Mendes, in putting an age gap between Hilary and Stephen, also suggests a changing generational approach to endemic abuses and systemic injustices.

The movie’s motives and premises are its strengths. Its utter absence of detail, nuance, inner life, and complex expression are its failures. Its connection to the world of movies, as a subject, is simply incongruous, although the theatre itself is a virtual character in the film—the building is a kind of masterwork of populist modernism, and its slender yet slablike parts and its asymmetrical perpendicularity are meshed with Art Deco details and lavishly comfortable furnishings. Hilary has little connection to movies, but a great one to the building itself—and to past graces that it harbors, ghostlike, in a shuttered upstairs ballroom that formerly hosted dances. (The theatre’s marquee still advertises that erstwhile attraction.) Her association with it remains (yes, again) unspecified. As for the cinema itself, its glories are incarnated by the theatre’s longtime projectionist, Norman (Toby Jones), who decorates his booth with the iconography of classic movies and their stars. Norman talks about the equipment of 35-mm. projection with love and initiates the curious and technically adept Stephen in that love, too.

“Empire of Light” gets its title from the wry illusions of Magritte, but reflects none of their self-deflating humor or conspicuous delight in deception. Rather, it builds to a grand, nostalgic, sentimental paean to the art of popular movies, and does so with no irony, no sense of history, no self-questioning of the art form itself. Mendes doesn’t contemplate or hint at the connection between the Hollywood movies (and the British hits) of the era and the social crises that he diagnoses, between mass media and mass politics, between the mores of movies and the ways of private life and public discourse. Instead, Mendes nostalgically connects himself to a fading and troubled past, without ambivalence or self-doubt, as if he had the recipe for its redemption. ♦

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‘empire of light’ review: olivia colman shines in sam mendes’ uneven romantic drama.

The filmmaker’s follow-up to ‘1917’ had its world premiere at Telluride and explores the unlikely bond between two employees of a movie theater.

By Sheri Linden

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clock This article was published more than 1 year ago

‘Empire of Light’ celebrates the power of film to heal lost souls

Olivia colman delivers a delicate yet ferocious performance at the heart of sam mendes’s tender and tear-soaked valentine to cinema.

Olivia Colman delivers an alternately delicate and ferocious performance as a cinema manager in “Empire of Light,” a tender, tear-soaked valentine to the ineffable joys of moviegoing.

Colman plays Hilary, a quiet, rather dowdy woman living in an unnamed seaside town in England in the 1980s. As “Empire of Light” opens, we meet one of her most beguiling co-stars: the Empire Cinema, a faded but vibrant art deco movie palace whose marquee during this Christmas season is advertising “The Blues Brothers” and “All That Jazz.” We meet the staff as they compare notes about eccentric customers and the worst thing they ever found as they cleaned up after the last show. Eventually, Hilary’s boss, Mr. Ellis — played with characteristic diffidence by Colin Firth — arrives, stiffly giving her a box of candy “with deep affection.”

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Just how deep becomes disquietingly clear in scenes to come; written and directed by Sam Mendes, “Empire of Light” doles out its information carefully and discreetly, as the contours of Hilary’s life make themselves known. There’s a tightly coiled sense of control at the center of her studied equanimity. When a newcomer joins the staff — an attractive, exuberant younger man named Stephen, portrayed with a disarming lack of guile by newcomer Micheal Ward — Hilary’s world expands, but her growing happiness also threatens to tip over into something more dangerous and increasingly terrifying.

The sleepy, small-town rhythms of “Empire of Light” are given pace and momentum by Mr. Ellis’s news that the Empire will play host to a genuine red-carpet premiere, of a new movie called “Chariots of Fire.” Thus is the film’s climax set in motion, except that it turns out to be something of a misdirect. Filmed by Roger Deakins in exquisite hues of gold and amber, and accompanied by an equally sensitive score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, “Empire of Light” is commendable not for its plot but for its collection of (mostly) sympathetic characters — not just Hilary and Stephen, who pursue an interracial friendship against the backdrop of Thatcher-era skinhead thuggery — but the Empire’s eclectic staff: the punk-tough usher Janine (Hannah Onslow), the observant junior manager Neil (Tom Brooke), and Norman (Toby Jones), the theater’s fastidious projectionist who carries film canisters as if he’s bearing the holy elements.

“Empire of Light” turns out to be the second movie this season in which a character delivers a tutorial on the concept of persistence of vision — the trick of the eye that allows movies to work their magic, whereby a series of single frames is perceived to be one continuous image. In Steven Spielberg’s “ The Fabelmans ,” that speech was meant to show the audience how the artist as a young man became fascinated not just by the mechanics of film but by its manipulative effect on the audience.

For Mendes, such disquisitions aren’t as self-congratulatory; rather, he has made a movie dedicated to the modest proposition that it takes viewers — not heroic auteurs — to create a film, or at least complete its expressive circuit. Colman dominates the film’s most dramatically vivid scenes, when Hilary reaches the end of the many ropes she’s been gripping so tightly. But the most upsetting sequence might be one in which a “scooter riot” of the aforementioned fascist hooligans comes dangerously close to destroying the grandeur of the Empire’s magnificent lobby, as if insurrectionists were attacking a citadel of civility itself.

“Empire of Light” occasionally overplays its sentiment — a subplot involving an injured bird feels manufactured and contrived. But it’s a soothingly beautiful film — visually pleasing, emotionally rich, and authentically touching when it comes to Hilary and Stephen’s evolving relationship. (A shot early in the film, in which Hilary tends to the box office alone, exudes a Hopper-esque tone of elegiac solitude.) Mendes pays homage to the films of his youth by way of the films that play as a way to mark time: “Stir Crazy” here, “Raging Bull” there; but his ode to the medium he loves goes even deeper, not just to its power to generate empathy, but to its pluralism. In “Empire of Light,” the theater is a great democratizer: a convener for misfits, loners and dreamers of every stripe. With this bittersweet gem of a film, Mendes has given spectators a modest but profound gift: the reminder that, at their best, movies offer us not just a refuge, but a way to join the thrum of life, in all its pain and ungovernable glory.

R. At area theaters. Contains sexuality, strong language and brief violence. 119 minutes.

Empire of Light Review

An abysmal cinematic car crash..

Empire of Light will hit theaters in the U.S. on Dec. 9, and U.K. theaters on Jan. 13.

Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light is the rare movie about movies that might make you despise the entire artform. One of the worst “prestige pictures” in years, it’s a soulless, artless, deeply misguided period film where all the pieces seem attractive on paper, but end up assembled in a form so shockingly un-cinematic as to induce annoyance at best. Set in a coastal English town in the early 1980s, it’s nominally about the changing tides of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, and nominally about the power of moving images — the characters all happen to work in a movie theater, you see — but it’s only “about” these things if you really strain yourself to make the connections. It would be like calling a phone book a romantic paperback.

Romance is central to Empire of Light as well, since it follows a listless, depressed, middle-aged theater manager, Hillary (Olivia Colman), who finds a much-needed spark when a young ticket-taker, Stephen (Micheal Ward), joins her staff for a summer before leaving for university. But this dynamic becomes increasingly buried beneath a barrage of disconnected subplots, whose literal and symbolic meanings Mendes can’t seem to connect, or express with any kind of verve. Worse yet, the writer-director assembles a genuine dream-team for the project, between Colman, cinematographer Roger Deakins ( Skyfall ), editor Lee Smith ( Dunkirk ), and composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross ( The Social Network ), which makes the end result all the more baffling and infuriating.

Stephen is young and suave, and Hillary is at times moody and unpredictable, traits which neither character is allowed to exist beyond, even as the movie follows them through both private and public moments. The two-screen theater itself, named Empire, is an alluring space that feels plucked out of a glorious past; it may be run down, but it once housed more ornate screens and event spaces, which have been locked away from the staff and customers, but which Stephen and Hillary frequent as their covert meeting spots. This dust-covered palace, hidden away above the main theater, is also meant to evoke a murky future for cinema, but Mendes never manages to establish why this setting in particular might be a worthwhile venue for such an inquiry. Not just the setting of the early ’80s, mind you, a period of box-office plenty, but the setting of a movie theater itself. For the most part, you could set this story in practically any other place of business, like a bowling alley, and have it be relatively unchanged.

Perhaps the only thing that would change is the sudden, wide-eyed conversations about moving images, which enter the story almost at random, courtesy of the theater’s projectionist, Norman (Toby Jones), which have little bearing on any of the characters. Norman waxes poetic to Stephen about the ability of light to illuminate, and the brain’s ability to filter out darkness when watching 24 flickering frames a second. But this idea — meant to speak to notions of optimism — becomes downright offensive once Stephen’s story begins to unfold.

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As a young Black man in Thatcher’s Britain, Stephen has it far from easy, and he even falls victim to local skinheads on occasion; what is he to do with any of Norman’s musings about seeing the light in a scenario such as this? Even stranger is the fact that Hillary witnesses one such instance of Stephen being accosted and verbally abused because of his race, which amounts to… nothing at all. A similar 1980s-set story from this year, Armageddon Time , at least frames the cowardice of a young James Gray, in his refusal to stand up for his Black friend, as a failure of white liberal America (and white Jewish America) to act on and reckoning with racism at pivotal moments in history. In Empire of Light, the view of the past is about as complex and detailed as “What if a white woman witnessed a hate crime? Wouldn’t that be awkward?”

Hillary certainly has her own troubles to deal with, between hints of a prior mental breakdown, and a boss (Colin Firth) who seems to have cornered her into an affair. Her frustrations are frequently misdirected towards Stephen, but are often flattened into afflicted rants and ravings about men in general, and about hegemonies which the film seems none too eager to unpack, since Stephen has his own demons to deal with, and Hillary hasn’t exactly been helpful in that regard. “You should read the newspaper,” he tells her at one point, as if Empire of Light’s key tactic is to raise some kind of nebulous awareness — but what’s more eye-opening than witnessing a hate-crime first hand? Though perhaps more accidentally eye-opening is that the film reduces even racially motivated violence to window dressing for a story about nothing and no one. It all but disconnects the inhumane from humanity itself, and severs the rising white supremacy of the era from the whiteness of its characters as it thoughtlessly meanders from scene to scene with nothing to say.

Some of this might be forgivable if it were a story whose textures and images conveyed some kind of meaning in silence, but it’s all plainly conceived. The lighting is occasionally warm, the music occasionally operatic, but none of these elements feel jagged when things go awry for Stephen, or when Hillary’s behavior becomes too erratic to manage, in a way that the film itself seems unprepared to capture. So, it merely shoves her off into a corner, and even keeps her off-screen for extended periods, instead of confronting the ways in which she comes undone. Imagine wasting Olivia Colman at her peak? Unforgivable.

For all its scattered musings about cinematic images, there’s barely a scene where Mendes’ own imagery feels purposeful. Enormous moments, like a parade of skinhead demonstrators seen from behind glass doors, or fireworks on New Year’s Eve as romance blossoms, have no intimacy — no grounding in discernible point of view — and the film’s intimate moments don’t seem to register at all, given the lifelessness with which they’re captured and staged, like somebody left the camera running during a table read. The only characters with anything resembling real humanity are the world-weary Norman, and another one of Hillary and Stephen’s young coworkers, Neil (Tom Brooke), who observes all the unfolding stories at a distance, from behind his enormous glasses, and comments on them with trepidation. But these fully formed people may as well be inconveniences to Empire of Light. Their richness and complications are too threatening for a film with the didactic morality of a Paw Patrol episode, and about the same nuanced understanding of post-punk socio-politics.

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An embarrassment of a movie, it gestures towards its own lofty emotional richness where none exists at all, and it comes wrapped in some of the most dull and lifeless filmmaking this side of a Microsoft Word tutorial . It’s an unfathomable failure of technique and imagination, and quite frankly, a waste of everyone’s time.

One of the worst, most soulless prestige pictures in years, Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light is a dull movie about nothing in particular, despite its central romance (which becomes quickly scattered), its musings about the power of cinema (which crop up and disappear at random), and the charged political backdrop of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain (the less said the better).

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Empire of Light Movie Review: Sam Mendes and Roger Deakins paint a hopeful tale

The name of Roger Deakins attached to a film like Empire of Light is comforting because if, instead of Sam Mendes, it was some other British name like Ken Loach or Mike Leigh under the director's credit, we would've probably gotten a drabber effort than what we got here. I don't mean this negatively, but I think the involvement of a consummate master of light like Deakins was apt for a picture involving two broken and tortured souls. He and Mendes place Olivia Colman and Michael Ward in the most picturesque and opulent settings, irrespective of their inner turmoil, and it doesn't seem jarring at all.

Director: Sam Mendes

Cast: Michael Ward, Olivia Colman, Colin Firth, Toby Jones

Streamer: Disney+ Hotstar

Deakins' exceptional vision finds order in chaos, light in the darkness, and warmth in coldness. If one were to imagine the whole film as an aquarium, you'd find it less murky, even if its occupants aren't happy about living in it. Some of the most memorable moments include two characters making love as soon as they've helped a bird recuperate from its injuries or the same couple seated against the backdrop of decorative lights filtered through alternatively tinted glass windows, or fireworks going off in the background after a spur-of-the-moment kiss, or a woman sitting alone in a movie hall watching Hal Ashby's Being There and getting overwhelmed by emotions.

Hilary (Colman) and Stephen (Ward) are battling two different demons in 1980s England -- the former, mental illness; the latter, racism. A middle-aged duty manager employed at a movie hall in a seaside town, Hilary is a bit of a mess, psychologically speaking, and Colman's casting ensures the film is in the right hands. The film's attention to her is unwavering, even when other characters arrive. She is one of those gifted performers whose face tells you what is going through the character's mind without saying a single word. Hilary's mental condition also makes her a pawn in the hands of her boss, Ellis (Colin Firth), a married man who takes advantage of her sexually, something to which she obliges owing to her loneliness. But she doesn't remain an obedient slave for long; one anticipates a chance at payback and liberation when the young black man, Stephen, is employed as an usher in the same theatre. Hilary sees in Stephen a potential love interest, despite the vast age gap, which adds to the pre-existing complications that comprise bipolar disorder and racism.

Because these above threatening factors constantly loom over these characters, Empire of Light occasionally evokes the mood of a film like Hiroshima Mon Amour or Cinema Paradiso . But Mendes is careful not to get too sentimental or morbid. One powerfully affecting scene has Hilary breaking down in her flat after being reminded of a harsh reality by Stephen. In another powerful scene, this time one that puts Hilary in a more dominating position, she recounts the terrible past experiences caused by toxic men, beginning with her father's history of cheating on her mother. The reluctance to tell her mother about it was due to a misplaced sense of loyalty, which explains her relationship with Ellis. But despite the cynicism engendered by such experiences, there remains in her a faint glimmer of hope about meeting the right man, age differences notwithstanding. Hilary is so enamoured of Stephen that she hasn't given enough thought to the trials and tribulations that a man of his background has to undergo since the day he was born.

For some, it might seem a tad unrealistic to have a woman like Hilary behave as though she doesn't understand the depth of the racial tensions in the country. "You should read the papers," he tells her. One could forgive this ignorance as the side-effect of dealing with too many personal problems. Empire of Light is one of Mendes' better films -- dealing with tender emotions and vulnerable individuals in a way he hasn't done since the extremely intense suburban dysfunctional drama Revolutionary Road (2008).

Thankfully, Empire of Light doesn't reach the overwhelming extremes of that film. Despite the vicissitudes of seasons that accompany the third act, it ends on a hopeful note.

Aside from Deakins, the other names that lend a delicate touch to the film are Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, whose sombre, piano-heavy soundtrack features guest appearances from notably upbeat songs like Joni Mitchell's 'You Turn Me On I'm a Radio', which has now found a spot in my playlist.

When measured against his previous films, Empire of Light finds Mendes at his most light-hearted since Away We Go (2009). I wish we got to see this mellower side of him more often.

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Empire of Light review: Sam Mendes strands Olivia Colman in an oddly impersonal love affair

There’s tender care in each frame, but this limp weepie is narratively ice cold, article bookmarked.

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There is a shallowness to Sam Mendes ’s Empire of Light , as if it’s more interested in grand displays of emotion than reflecting the full-body experience of someone’s life. Mendes has called it a tribute to his own mother. Others have declared it a love letter to cinema. So why is it so oddly impersonal? So cold? So closed off from its audience?

Set in 1981, within a fictional Margate cinema named the Empire, it concerns a love affair that seems predicated mostly on sorrow. Hilary Small ( Olivia Colman ), middle-aged, lives half-invisible with a psychiatric disorder. Stephen ( Micheal Ward ), significantly younger, is the son of Caribbean immigrants faced with the daily trauma of a racist England.

Both work at the Empire, Stephen newly employed. All it takes to nurture their romantic impulses is their discovery of a pigeon with a broken wing – they, of course, feel a kinship with this lonely, vulnerable creature. Empire of Light skips between their respective sufferings, always through the other’s eyes. Hilary watches, helpless, when Stephen is the victim of racist attacks. Stephen watches, helpless, when Hilary is chewed up and spit out by the health care system.

Mendes’s script, his first as a solo writer, deals with a sort of formless empathy – what it’s like to witness injustice and feel very, very bad about it. But it lacks necessary self-interrogation. There’s no real sense of purpose beyond the soothing of a privileged viewer’s guilt. The emotions are too thin, a set of codes to interpret rather than anything raw or real. Hilary’s soul-sickness is neatly summarised by the tragedy of the single cracker lying next to a Christmas-dinner-for-one, or by the repellent command of “suck me” by the Empire manager (Colin Firth) who regularly calls her into his office to demand listless handjobs.

Colman, who doesn’t seem to have an inauthentic bone in her body, takes hold of Hilary’s public breakdowns with both fists at the ready – she’s glorious in her untethering, with lipstick on her teeth. But we’re watching these characters from a distance, as if through warped glass, in a way that does a particular disservice to the quiet, internal collapse Ward conjures in Stephen. The most important figures in his life, Stephen’s mother Delia (Tanya Moodie) and his old girlfriend Ruby (Crystal Clarke), are such late additions to the story that they’re barely allowed to make an impression.

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And what of this supposed “love letter to cinema”? There’s a hint of it in the cinematography of Mendes’s frequent collaborator, Roger Deakins ( Skyfall , 1917 ). There’s such tender care in each frame, in the way characters are haloed within the vast expanses of Mark Tildesley’s detailed production design. They look like saints plucked out of a triptych. It certainly achieves more than the sentimental speeches of projectionist Toby Norman (Toby Jones), or the background advertisements for contemporary films like The Blues Brothers , Stir Crazy , or Raging Bull .

Empire of Light ends on Hilary, a former film agnostic now converted, her teary features lit up by the projection playing on screen. It’s Hal Ashby’s Being There , featuring a late-career Peter Sellers (though Mendes never explores his almost ironic choice of movie, about a man raised by television finally stepping out into the outside world). The shot feels mechanically engineered for one of those “see you at the movies” montages at the Oscars, offering about the same insight as Nicole Kidman, in her viral ad for the US cinema chain AMC, declaring that “somehow heartbreak feels good in a place like this”. Empire of Light cares only that Hilary wear that heartbreak for all to see. What sparked it is anyone’s guess.

Dir: Sam Mendes. Starring: Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Tanya Moodie, Toby Jones, Colin Firth. 15, 115 minutes.

‘Empire of Light’ is in cinemas from Monday 9 January

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‘Empire of Light’ Review: Sam Mendes’ Love Letter to Cinema Lacks Focus

This reverie on movie palaces often forgets the part about actually loving film, among many other script issues

This review originally ran September 4, 2022, in conjunction with the film’s world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival.

For a movie that’s supposed to be a love letter to cinema, among other things, it’s surprising how little the magic of movies genuinely registers as a vibe in Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light,” a frustratingly uneven and often meandering period drama written by Mendes, loosely drawing remembrances from his own formative years.

And he pulls from “a lockdown mindset,” too, as the director put it before his ’80s-set film’s world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, a melancholic state of being marked by feelings of loneliness and even fear that things we love (like movie theaters) would be lost forever in a post-pandemic world.

Perhaps because his inspirations seem to be so extensive here, it often feels like Mendes is searching for a story within a bottomless well of moods and ideas throughout “Empire of Light.” Ironically enough, this undisciplined disposition is the exact opposite of the kind of taut restraint that was at the core of “1917,” his previous, tightly orchestrated and end-to-end choreographed film.

“Empire of Light” starts with an admiration towards the enchanted majesty of cinemas, as Hilary (an affecting Olivia Colman, with an impressively wide-ranging emotional scale) preps the beautiful movie palace where she works for its daily opening, her gentle touches aided by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ soothingly nostalgic score. But then it somehow expands on the transportive power of movies only in extremely limited doses, reducing all its pretty visual and aural elements — including Roger Deakins’ adoring lens and lighting — down to precious yet empty production details as a result.

It doesn’t help that the film’s central character, Hilary, shows nearly no interest in movies until the end. “It’s for the customers,” she says when a colleague wonders why she never sneaks in to treat herself to a show at Empire, a handsome playhouse grandly designed by Mark Tildesley in deep red velvet, shiny woods and art deco brass.

With the exception of a superbly cast Toby Jones as projectionist Norman, an old-school artisan with a sincere love for the craft and medium he takes pride in, the rest of the theater staff seem to be more or less like Hilary in their general indifference to film. The main personas are the excessively styled punk Janine (Hannah Onslow), the meek Neil (Tom Brooke) and Mr. Ellis (Colin Firth, amusingly slimy), the locale’s married big boss with iffy morals, often fetching a more-than-willing Hilary into his office for a quickie and complaining how his wife won’t even make him a cup of tea these days. (The scandal!) It’s 1980, so they’re surrounded by posters of “9 to 5” and “The Elephant Man,” with 1981’s “Chariots of Fire” on the horizon as a “regional gala premiere” at the Empire, as announced by Mr. Ellis with admittedly endearing excitement.

The spirited Stephen (a terrific Micheal Ward of “Lovers Rock”) is most welcome by all when he joins the theater staff’s ranks as a junior member, immediately grabbing Hilary’s attention with his tenderness. Soon, the two bond over Stephen’s compassionate tending to a bird’s broken wing, and they eventually become lovers through secretive trysts at Empire’s abandoned top floor, a frozen-in-time ballroom with lingering splendor. Mendes strikes a charming tempo between Hilary and Stephen as they progress in their relationship, with the once forlorn Hilary no longer seeking refuge in awkward ballroom-dance lessons or lonesome dinners.

Mendes loses his grip on the material quickly from here on out, plugging Hilary’s severe mental struggles — only teased but never quite explained previously — into the story all too suddenly. It often feels like some pieces are missing when Hilary goes off the deep end in a few scenes (one, during that aforementioned “regional gala premiere”), launching into a number of heavy-handed monologues about her troubled past that come out of nowhere.

Also ill-handled, like the film’s binary approach to mental health, is the period’s racism; by putting Stephen through the wringer repeatedly, “Empire of Light” often treats racism like an embarrassingly broad “teachable moment” talking point, instead of engaging with it on a deeper level. One exception to this attitude occurs during an insightfully written scene when a racist customer confronts and intimidates Stephen, who’s politely only doing his job. But an overdone and unconvincing attack by skinheads on the Empire sadly undoes the credibility the film earns elsewhere.

In its wake (and not unlike last year’s “Belfast”), “Empire of Light” feels more like a sweet experiment on nostalgia and memory than an articulate film with something to say. This sadly becomes most evident in the film’s final chapter, which introduces two new characters: Stephen’s mom Delia (Tanya Moodie) and old friend/new romantic interest Ruby (Crystal Clarke). Regrettably, these two intriguing women often feel like afterthoughts in a story that feels mostly finished before they enter it. The last act also suffers from at least three different endings, making one wonder if there could have been a tighter, leaner film rescued out of this rubble.

“Empire of Light” opens in US theaters Dec. 9 via Searchlight Pictures.

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You’d be hard-pressed to find a more worthy, time-tested miniseries about America’s founding than HBO’s “ John Adams ”—a riveting, elegant chronicle of one of our nation’s most famed architects. It’s a subject writer Kirk Ellis can’t seem to get away from; here, in 2024, he, along with co-writer Howard Korder (“Boardwalk Empire”), zeroes in on another of Adams’ contemporaries, Benjamin Franklin, for an eight-episode miniseries on Apple TV+. But where “John Adams” illuminated one of American history’s more self-serious advocates for liberty and equality, “Franklin” has a bit of fractured fun with its more libertine protagonist.

It’s 1776, and the Revolutionary War is raging; to drum up monetary and logistical support from France, America sends Benjamin Franklin (a wry, taciturn Michael Douglas ) across the Atlantic with his teenage grandson and aide Temple ( Noah Jupe ) in tow. There, the two ingratiate themselves to French society, attempting to work their way through the deeply entrenched barriers that keep them from the purse-string-holders who might unlock the coffers of the French war machine. In the early stretches, “Franklin” sees both American boys engaged in a charm offensive with their hosts, whether it’s Benjamin batting eyes at Anne Louise Brillon de Juoy (a radiant Ludivine Sagnier ) or Temple cozying up to a group of idealistic revolutionaries (including “On Becoming a God in Central Florida”’s Théodore Pellerin as the charming Gilbert du Motier, who’d soon become the famed Marquis de Lafayette).

However, the more their efforts find purchase within the French aristocracy, the more their problems compound: British spies and representatives quickly enter the negotiation to either stop Franklin entirely or present a suitably attractive offer to the Americans to stop the war in exchange for concessions. What’s more, Franklin’s own physician, Edward Bancroft ( Daniel Mays ), juggles his care for Franklin with his work as a double agent for the Brits. That’s to say nothing of a mid-negotiation interruption by Franklin’s stateside rival, John Adams ( Eddie Marsan ), whose uptight self-righteousness threatens to derail Franklin’s more socially deft handling of the French mood. And as the pair of them and John Joy claw their way to a formally signed treaty with Britain at war’s end, their competing perspectives about what America should look like and how it should treat its allies come to loggerheads.

“Franklin”’s see-sawing priorities are made clear in the show’s entertaining title sequence, a Pythonesque array of figures drawn from political cartoons of the time showing Franklin in varying states of scandal and intrigue. That’s also captured in Tim van Patten’s thorough, considered direction; he and cinematographer David Franco lean heavily on natural light and desaturated blues to craft a France still clinging to ostentatiousness even as its own cruddiness becomes clear (see: the frequent reveals of characters pissing against stone walls of ornate architecture). Jay Wadley ’s score effortlessly balances the classical stuffiness of 18th-century France with modern scoring techniques that sell the show’s frequent dips into political thriller mode.

As Franklin, Douglas is an entertainingly droll figure; he balances the presumed historical wit of the real Franklin with a decidedly Douglas-ian twinkle in his eye. He’s grandfatherly with Temple, but no less a hedonist than someone like Gordon Gekko—he plays Franklin as if one of his erotic-thriller protagonists from “ Basic Instinct ” or “ Fatal Attraction ” got zapped back in time and slapped on a powdered wig. He’s wizened but no less amorous for his advanced years, the kind of aging playboy that fits in nicely with the pre-French Revolution decadence around him. Douglas handles the dry wit of Ellis and Korder’s script with a nimbleness belying his years, even as Franklin’s own health threatens to leave him bedridden for much of the latter stages.

While he plays well against his co-stars, especially his paternal guidance of Jupe’s Temple, he comes most alive when sniping with Adams, who appears halfway through the series as if he were Nick Fury about to rope Ben into the Founders Initiative. Marsan’s energy as Adams is decidedly different from Giamatti’s in Ellis’ original 2008 miniseries—“Franklin” feels like a series-long extension of that series’ third episode, which depicted a more truncated version of these events—but no less welcome. He’s a haughtier, more confrontational balm to Franklin’s frivolity, a junior statesman who hasn’t yet figured out how to play the game. (His private attempts to speak and memorize French are some of the show’s more archly funny moments.)

The show stumbles more when focusing on Temple, though Jupe plays the role with an admirable, youthful pluck. Where Franklin struggles to carve out a legacy in his final years, Temple comes of age, losing himself in the frippery and bustle of French life. He falls in love with an opera singer, gets involved in love triangles, and even finds a job as a page rushing letters across Paris at speed. While these subplots could carry a show on their own, they pale in comparison with the heftier statecraft of Douglas’ sections; in a show already stretching past eight hours, they often feel like distractions, and don’t sufficiently contrast Ben Franklin’s more sophisticated statecraft to make them feel worth the runtime.

As historical dramas go, “Franklin” is a cracking glimpse at the delicate works required to build a republic, even from an ocean away. After all, America’s freedom from Britain was won by more than muskets on the battlefields of Lexington and Concord; it took gumption, charm, and no small amount of promise-making, whether real or illusory, to our allies. What Van Patten and his crew accomplish is the feeling of a new nation being forged in the waning embers of an old empire and the cautious optimism all parties feel toward that potential.

Whole series screened for review. Franklin begins streaming on Apple TV+ April 12.

Clint Worthington

Clint Worthington is a Chicago-based film/TV critic and podcaster. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Spool , as well as a Senior Staff Writer for Consequence . He is also a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and Critics Choice Association. You can also find his byline at RogerEbert.com, Vulture, The Companion, FOX Digital, and elsewhere.

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Empire of Light movie review & film summary (2022)
Empire of Light. "Empire of Light" is a grandiose title for Sam Mendes' intimate new character drama, which starts out a bit dim and unfocused and becomes sharper and more illuminating as it unreels. The story is set in the fall and winter of 1980-81 in the seaside town of Margate, Kent, around a palatial two-screen Art Deco theater that shows ...
'Empire of Light' Review: They Found It at the Movies
None of that really interests Mendes here, even though the story of Hilary and Stephen might have benefited from a tougher, less sentimental telling. Empire of Light. Rated R. Sex and violence ...
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Empire of Light is a sweet, heartfelt, humane movie, which doesn't shy away from the brutality and the racism that was happening in the streets outside the cinema: the Empire is showing Stir ...
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But I may mislead you. Despite such droll moments, Empire of Light is not a comedy. It is also, contrary to first impressions, very much another film about the glory of cinema itself. That message ...
Empire of Light (2022)
Empire of Light: Directed by Sam Mendes. With Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Colin Firth, Toby Jones. A drama about the power of human connection during turbulent times, set in an English coastal town in the early 1980s.
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Crew: Director, writer: Sam Mendes. Camera: Roger Deakins. Editor: Lee Smith. Music: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross. With: Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Tom Brooke, Tanya Moodie, Hannah Onslow, Crystal ...
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The legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins — who last won an Oscar for Mendes' 1917 — gives their beach trips and late-night bus rides a suffused glow, and even in a movie as modest as Empire ...
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Release Date: 08 Jan 2023. Original Title: Empire Of Light. Sam Mendes ' last film, the one-shot war epic 1917, was a tribute to his grandfather, a World War I veteran. Empire Of Light, his ...
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Transcript. "Empire of Light" is director Sam Mendes' tribute to cinema. Actress Olivia Colman plays a slowly unraveling employee at Britain's Empire Theater in the 1980s. AILSA CHANG, HOST ...
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It is a gorgeous film, at once airy and earthy, the proud, yet crumbling glamour of the Empire placing us in this moment in time. Funnily enough, "Empire of Light" shares some story DNA with ...
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Set in an English seaside town in the early 1980s, EMPIRE OF LIGHT is a powerful and poignant story about human connection and the magic of cinema, from Academy Award®-winning director Sam Mendes.
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Last modified on Mon 16 Jan 2023 11.03 EST. T here are plenty of themes swimming around in Sam Mendes's sprawling, uneven Empire of Light, but few coherent ideas linking them. Set in the 1980s ...
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Review by Ann Hornaday. December 7, 2022 at 9:38 a.m. EST. Olivia Colman, left, and Micheal Ward in "Empire of Light." (Searchlight Pictures/AP) ( 3.5 stars) Olivia Colman delivers an ...
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Collider. Sep 14, 2022. Empire of Light ultimately becomes a confusing mixture of ideas that never congeal into one solid narrative. Yet Mendes' film does have the tiniest slivers of magic poking through the seams, proving his thesis about the beauty of film, even when he's too distracted to focus on that idea himself.
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Empire of Light will hit theaters in the U.S. on Dec. 9, and U.K. theaters on Jan. 13. Sam Mendes' Empire of Light is the rare movie about movies that might make you despise the entire artform.
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Empire of Light is a 2022 British romantic drama film directed, written, and co-produced by Sam Mendes.Set in an English coastal town in the early 1980s, the film is about the power of human connection during turbulent times. It stars Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Monica Dolan, Tom Brooke, Tanya Moodie, Hannah Onslow, Crystal Clarke, Toby Jones, and Colin Firth.
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Empire of Light is one of Mendes' better films -- dealing with tender emotions and vulnerable individuals in a way he hasn't done since the extremely intense suburban dysfunctional drama Revolutionary Road (2008). Thankfully, Empire of Light doesn't reach the overwhelming extremes of that film. Despite the vicissitudes of seasons that accompany ...
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M3GAN review: The memes haven't oversold this smart, mean and gleefully absurd killer doll thriller ... Roger Deakins (Skyfall, 1917 ... Empire of Light ends on Hilary, a former film agnostic ...
Empire of Light Film Review: Sam Mendes' Love Letter to Cinema Lacks Focus
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He's a haughtier, more confrontational balm to Franklin's frivolity, a junior statesman who hasn't yet figured out how to play the game. (His private attempts to speak and memorize French are some of the show's more archly funny moments.) The show stumbles more when focusing on Temple, though Jupe plays the role with an admirable ...

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