Movie Review: EMPIRE OF LIGHT

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: December 9th, 2022 / 06:34 AM

EMPIRE OF LIGHT movie poster | ©2022 Searchlight Pictures

Rating: R
Stars: Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Colin Firth, Toby Jones
Writer: Sam Mendes
Director: Sam Mendes
Distributor: Searchlight Pictures
Release Date: December 9, 2022

EMPIRE OF LIGHT fits perfectly within the genre of the English period romance. In the 1980s, period romances were made about the 1940s – now it’s 2020, and the ‘80s, when EMPIRE OF LIGHT is set, count as period.

These films often have social barriers between the potential lovers. Here, rather than social class, it’s age (she’s in her late forties, he’s in his mid-twenties) race (she’s white, he’s Black), and mental health issues (she’s been in and out of the hospital and currently on Lithium, he’s stable).

Hilary (Olivia Colman) works at the Empire, a seaside two-screen cinema, supervising the staff. Stephen (Micheal Ward) is a new hire, cordial, conscientious, and taken with Hilary’s literate nature. The two become friends, then something more.

But there are problems. Hilary’s fear of abandonment is one, which she sometimes copes with by pushing Stephen in the other direction. Her not understanding Stephen’s situation as a Black man is another, although the menace of the fascist, racist, violent National Front suggests some tragic education will occur.

Director/writer Sam Mendes wants to use Hilary, Stephen and their co-workers – particularly knowledgeable projectionist Norman, played with delightful practicality by Toby Jones – to illustrate the joys of cinema.

While both Mendes’s intent and passion are clear, he hasn’t figured out how to translate this into something that the audience can hook up with intellectually, much less relate to viscerally.

Maybe it’s due to the lack of access to the right film clips, but while we hear about how much Stephen loves movies, and how Hilary comes to love them, we don’t feel it from them. For better and worse, both characters are so entirely immersed in their real world that movies don’t appear to have a transformational effect on either one. Their romance has much more visible impact.

Colman is wonderful in every phase of Hilary’s considerable variety of moods. Ward exudes charm and compassion as Stephen, though his role is not as nuanced as Colman’s. Colin Firth puts the right amount of smarminess into their awful boss.

Mendes does a lovely job of conveying the delicate electricity of human connection, as well as providing a sober sense of terror when violence erupts. His script is specific and deeply emotional, while at the same time displays the kind of restraint we associate with British cinema.

But the one thing EMPIRE OF LIGHT doesn’t do is convince us that there is something about movies, much less give to us what it is about movies, that changes the course of Hilary and Stephen’s psyches. This wouldn’t normally be a flaw – there are plenty of films that don’t reference the art form at all – except that it seems to be EMPIRE OF LIGHT’s ultimate goal.

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