Empire of Light review: Sam Mendes’ Bafta-bait is tough and tender in the most unexpected ways

A heart-warming love letter to the movies, wherein a misfit bunch of employees, including two national treasures (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman), must pull together to keep a fading Margate cinema alive? I felt like I could predict every cosy beat of Empire Of Light before I’d even seen it. Which just goes to show how wrong I can be. 

The red velvet curtains part on coastal England, on the cusp of 1981. Hilary (Olivia Colman) is the depressed duty manager of The Empire, a vast and beautiful art deco cinema on the Margate seafront, run by Colin Firth, with whom she’s having a shady, sex-on-his-desk affair.

Into this twilight world steps a new recruit, Stephen (Micheal Ward), a young, black, wannabe architect who bonds with Hilary as they patch up a pigeon with a broken wing. An unlikely attraction is sparked. However, Hilary is wrestling with an illness that Stephen only slowly begins to recognise, while Stephen is increasingly ground down by a lifetime of racist abuse.

Written and directed by Sam Mendes (Skyfall, 1917), we’re talking serious Bafta-bait here.

Basically, Empire Of Light is this year’s Belfast. Similarly born out of lockdown, it’s a nostalgic celebration of the transporting joys and communal power of cinema, set against a backdrop of social unrest – in this case the rise of the National Front skinheads.

Again, like Belfast, it’s wonderfully acted, with an evocative soundtrack (music here by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) and beautifully shot, in this case by legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins (Blade Runner 2049).

Colin Firth stars in the upcoming film (Pictue: SearchlightPictures)

Empire Of Light is this year’s Belfast (Picture: SearchlightPictures)

It’s also, notably, Mendes’ first solo credit as a writer, which proves both strength and weakness. It’s a very English dramedy that pushes against your expectations, meshing in multiple concerns about mental health, the taboos of cross-generational romance, workplace abuse and more.

This makes for a richly complex, if uneven, mix. Inevitably perhaps, it’s Colman’s performance that seizes the spotlight, leaving Stephen dangerously close to becoming a Manic Pixie Dream Boy in the movie’s opening half, were it not for Ward’s committed warmth and depth.

It’s a nostalgic celebration of the transporting joys and communal power of cinema (Picture: SearchlightPictures)

It’s tough and tender in the most unexpected places (Picture: SearchlightPictures)

Yet it’s never dull or unambitious. Tough and yet tender in the most unexpected places, like the central characters, it’s a movie that can’t be neatly pigeon-holed. As a lover of the silver screen you can’t help but be won over.

‘Film – it’s just static frames with darkness in between,’ rhapsodises Toby Jones’ projectionist, ‘but 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. You just see a beam of light.’

There’s an Oscars’ night clip all ready to go.  

Empire of Light is set for release on January 13.

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A heart-warming love letter to the movies.