Empire of Light – first-look review

Of the uncount­able images gift­ed to the world by Jean-Luc Godard, the one that stands out as per­haps the most pure­ly beau­ti­ful is the moment from Vivre Sa Vie when Anna Kari­na, her face lit by the glow of the screen, silent­ly weeps as she watch­es The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc. As the tears fall out of her dark-lined eyes and down her cheeks, we feel with her and through her, as she feels with and through Fal­conet­ti, a deep and eter­nal sad­ness which is tran­sub­stan­ti­at­ed into joy by the sheer mir­a­cle of its artic­u­la­tion, a peace that pas­seth all understanding.

The day I learned of Godard’s death, I saw Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light, dur­ing which Olivia Col­man at one point sits in a movie the­atre, haloed by the divine light of the pro­jec­tor beam, laugh­ing and cry­ing, allow­ing her­self at last to tru­ly expe­ri­ence her deep­est pain and most hope­ful bliss. As I watched this scene, I thought about what I would have for dinner.

Empire of Light is a char­ac­ter-dri­ven romance set in and around a South Coast movie the­atre – set there, one sus­pects, because Mendes hopes that if he makes us watch Col­man cry like Godard made us watch Kari­na cry, he might trick us into think­ing that any­thing we’re feel­ing is real.

Col­man plays Hillary, the duty man­ag­er at the Empire, on the Mar­gate seafront. Hillary is the first to come and the last to leave, open­ing the box office and sweep­ing up the pop­corn, then head­ing home to a qui­et Christ­mas din­ner alone. (Mendes loves to film depressed women in a clean, hushed, almost hal­lowed style, which is thank­ful­ly mar­gin­al­ly more appro­pri­ate in Empire of Light than in the after­math of Kate Winslet’s fatal self-admin­is­tered abor­tion in Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Road.) Hillary recites poet­ry, and lives for quick, des­per­ate shags in the office of her mar­ried, appar­ent­ly some­what posh man­ag­er (Col­in Firth). She nev­er goes to the movies.

The time is 1980 and 1981, the era of two-tone ska – black and white togeth­er, as one of the younger the­atre employ­ees explains – as well as skin­heads and Thatch­er, as new the­atre employ­ee Stephen (Michael Ward) reminds Hilary (and the audi­ence) dur­ing a hilar­i­ous­ly com­pressed these-are-the-times run­down. Stephen is Black, the son of a Win­drush nurse. Hilary is lone­ly, and mid­dle-aged. Nat­u­ral­ly, they devel­op a mutu­al attrac­tion, bond­ing by tak­ing care of a bro­ken-winged bird. Sub­tle, that.

Their friend­ly romance is shad­owed by their age dif­fer­ence, racial prej­u­dice from the com­mu­ni­ty at large (the same three skin­heads who men­ace Stephen in mul­ti­ple scenes), and Hillary’s own demons, heav­i­ly fore­shad­owed ear­ly on. Col­man, a warm and goofy actress who has tak­en the film world by storm with the rev­e­la­tion of her until recent­ly latent gift for pow­er­house emot­ing, goes fur­ther into roar­ing-vir­tu­oso mode than the mate­r­i­al can bear.

Hillary’s sec­ond-act men­tal break­down, with stormy moods giv­ing way to lilt­ing delu­sions and then streaked-make­up rants, verges dan­ger­ous­ly close camp, espe­cial­ly when Mendes has the Char­i­ots of Fire score play­ing under­neath one of her man­ic mono­logues, for an extra iron­ic push.

The ear­ly Thatch­er years, in a sea­side town that they for­got to close down, is no one’s idea of a nos­tal­gia trip, but Empire of Light is, shot for shot, gor­geous, with Margate’s pre­war archi­tec­ture and the pro­duc­tion design’s lux­u­ri­ant poly-blend peri­od tex­tures pho­tographed with almost tire­some bur­nish­ment by cheat-code cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Roger Deakins. (How nice, at least, to see a film at this TIFF that isn’t under­lit to sig­ni­fy its weight­i­ness.) The Empire itself is the most elab­o­rate­ly inau­then­tic peri­od fan­ta­sy of all.

It’s a movie palace, with red vel­vet cur­tain, plush seats and prosce­ni­um, brass rails and pol­ished cop­per lob­by fix­tures. But it has two screens, as well as two more audi­to­ria roped-off upstairs – evi­dent­ly for decades, if the Red Shoes poster cov­ered by cob­webs is any indi­ca­tion. What is hap­pen­ing here? Are we meant to believe that the Empire was actu­al­ly Britain’s first pur­pose-built mul­ti­plex, decades before the Point in Mil­ton Keynes?

If a place like the Empire had twin screens in 1980 – as many large pre­war the­atres did by then – it would be because the inte­ri­or had been carved up amidst an ongo­ing process of decline and dis­re­pair, and would hard­ly resem­ble the intact Deco mas­ter­piece of Empire of Light.

In fact, the Empire is actu­al­ly the Grade II* list­ed Dream­land, on Marine Ter­race, which hasn’t reg­u­lar­ly shown films for about 15 years. As Cin­e­ma Trea­sures help­ful­ly informs us, Dream­land was twinned in 1973, with two cin­e­mas installed in the for­mer bal­cony of the 2,000-seat sin­gle-screen cin­e­ma; by the time Empire of Light takes place, the for­mer stalls were being used as a bin­go hall.

One of the most pow­er­ful things movies can do is to enlarge and retouch mem­o­ries in the mind, to give them a grandeur that looms awe­some­ly and lov­ing­ly over our lives. It’s what Steven Spiel­berg does, with an arche­typ­al gloss that’s maybe cyn­i­cal and def­i­nite­ly tran­scen­dent­ly skil­ful, in The Fabel­mans, and many oth­er films before it.

But Empire of Light isn’t about anyone’s mem­o­ries, not real­ly. The most real­is­tic touch in the entire film is the five-year-old Killer Elite poster in the Empire’s lob­by, which speaks to the shab­by banal­i­ty, only poet­ic in ret­ro­spect, of com­mer­cial cin­e­ma and escapist moviego­ing in this time and place.

No one was roman­tic about cel­lu­loid when it was the default for­mat for Hol­ly­wood prod­uct, with thou­sands of iden­ti­cal prints shipped out every week. Yet the Empire’s pro­jec­tion­ist, played by Toby Jones, has a priest­ly rev­er­ence for the stuff; he calls the pro­jec­tors his ​“babies,” and, in a voice husky with won­der­ment, explains per­sis­tence of vision to Stephen (like Burt Fabel­man, except that the scene in Empire of Light has no ground­ing in character).

Movie-mag­a­zine pho­tos are plas­tered all over his booth, and unload­ing reels of the new films from the van that brings them every week, he prac­ti­cal­ly twin­kles: ​“Pre­cious car­go.” No it’s not, man. It’s Pri­vate Benjamin.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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