{"id":19269,"date":"2022-12-08T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-08T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=19269"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:11:43","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:11:43","slug":"review-empire-of-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/review-empire-of-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Empire of Light<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the 23 years since his debut feature American Beauty<\/em>, Sam Mendes has put together a fairly sturdy filmography \u2013 a few hits, a few misses, a couple of paychecks, etc. \u2013 without ever giving us a really clear sense of who he <\/em>is. He\u2019s not exactly a journeyman; he has a recognizable style, thanks primarily to the frequency of his collaborations. But it\u2019s easy to think of him as a hired gun, since, for most of his film career, he didn\u2019t write his films. He only recently attempted to add that to his skill set, co-penning 2019\u2019s 1917<\/em> and now taking his first solo screenwriting credit for his most personal film to date, Empire of Light<\/em>. His ambition is perhaps more admirable than its outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The setting is the Empire Theatre, a glorious two-screen movie house in Thatcher-era England, where Harriet (Olivia Colman) is the duty manager. Middle-aged and mildly dissatisfied, she has no real relationships to speak of, aside from occasional, awkward sex with the theater\u2019s married manager (Colin Firth) in his office. And then a new employee arrives; the cheerful Stephen (Micheal Ward). They don\u2019t have much in common; he\u2019s a much younger, much warmer Black man. But they keep spending time together, on and off the clock, and before either of them realize it, their relationship is both secret and physical. (There are quite a few HR violations in this particular story.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is Mendes\u2019 rather rotten luck that his film is coming out in such close proximity to Steven Spielberg\u2019s \u201clove letter to the movies\u201d \/ memory play of his teen years, The Fabelmans<\/em><\/a>, though the two pictures\u2019 similarities are mostly on the surface: a few lines about living out your dreams, a speech explaining the mechanics of the \u201cmotion picture.\u201d They both use the love of cinema, to varying degrees, as window dressing, and just as The Fabelmans<\/em> was more about the dissolution of a family, Empire of Light<\/em> is chiefly concerned with this romantic relationship that just happens to have occurred in a cinematic workplace. The main difference between the filmmakers\u2019 approach to the material is that Spielberg had the good sense to hire a Pulitzer winner to help him write his. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Colman is very good, always giving it her all; mark, if you will, the way she says \u201cshit\u201d after their first, midnight kiss, the brave face she puts on in a breakup scene, and how she falls apart the second she\u2019s behind closed doors. But Mendes\u2019 script and approach keep hanging her out to dry. Her first sign of mental duress, a breakdown while destroying a carefully built sandcastle, should pack a wallop \u2013 but it\u2019s played at too much of a remove, with the camera as spectator, rather than participant. She gets up to give an unsolicited speech at a black tie premiere, the biggest thing that\u2019s ever happened at the Empire, and it\u2019s deeply uncomfortable (and beautifully played). But the big confrontation that follows feels overwritten and overdone, so broad that it verges on sitcom territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s all downhill from there. The turns the character is forced to take are too wild to be credible, so by the end, she feels less like a character than a construct. Stephen tries to help her, and she waves him off: \u201cI am not your patient!\u201d she bellows. \u201cI am not some problem to be solved!\u201d The question, by that point, is whether the movie agrees.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are things here to recommend \u2013 Toby Jones is just perfect as the theatre projectionist, holding court and pontificating in the break room, teaching Stephen, with split-second accuracy, how to change the reels during a show. And Mendes\u2019s regular cinematographer, the great Roger Deakins, has a ball shooting this beautiful space (pay close attention to the framing and lighting of those office hook-ups, which are somehow, simultaneously, both sexy and sad).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But most of Mendes\u2019s attempts to address race are clumsy, and a skinhead riot in the third act reads like a failed attempt to do a Do the Right Thing<\/em>; it\u2019s too heavy, and the picture all but topples over. For long stretches, Empire of Light<\/em> just barely holds together. By that point, it pretty much gives way. \"\"\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

C<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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