Empire of Light
Cert 12A| ★✩✩✩✩

Jewish director Sam Mendes follows his multi-award winning war film 1917 with this lacklustre drama set in the 1980s and starring Oscar-winner Olivia Colman.

Empire of Light is the first film to be fully scripted by Mendes, who calls it a “love letter to cinema”. Sadly, it’s a complete disappointment, not so much a love letter as an empty text.

Hilary (Colman) works as a front of house manager at Margate’s once grand, but now crumbling Art Deco cinema, and struggles with her mental health.

Following a breakdown she’s on a strong dose of lithium. Back at work, she is harassed by her stuffy bore of a boss, played by Colin Firth.

Hilary’s world is turned upside down by the arrival of a young black usher named Stephen, played by Michael Ward. As the pair get closer, Hilary loses herself in the possibility of a happy ever after with her young lover, but chaos ensues when her mental health deteriorates once again.

Sad to say Empire of Light is a hugely disappointing undertaking from a director whose work has been perfect up until now.

Quite aside from the reductive narrative centring around the age-gap relationship between Hillary and Stephen, it is baffling anyone could have managed to set a film in an old cinema while failing to capitalise on the potential for film-loving romance.

Empire of light 2

Toby Jones and Olivia Colman

Despite its efforts to broach race and socio-political issues of the time, the film falls flat by trying to be too many things all at once.

Empire of Light is neither a convincing age-gap love story, nor does it authentically evoke the 1980s. And while Colman is as good as she’s ever been in anything, she is sadly given very little in a way of story to work with.

This movie could have been so much more and yet it fails on almost every level.
It had the potential to be something rather special, and the cast is full of talent, but it’s badly let down by its lame storyline and preposterous denouement.