Empire of Light

The air in an old movie house has a specific weight to it. It’s a mix of floor wax, stale upholstery, and the ozone scent of a hot projector lamp. Sam Mendes clearly knows that smell. In Empire of Light, he tries to bottle it, handing the jar to the legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins and asking him to make the dust motes look like diamonds. The result is a film that is frequently breathtaking to look at, even when the script feels like it’s trying to juggle three different movies at once.

I watched this on a Tuesday afternoon while eating a bowl of overly salted popcorn that made my tongue shrivel, which felt strangely appropriate for a movie set in a dying seaside town. There’s a saltiness to Empire of Light that cuts through the visual sugar. It arrived in late 2022 as part of a strange, post-pandemic wave of "movies about movies" (The Fabelmans, Babylon), but while those films were busy deifying the silver screen, Mendes was more interested in the broken people sweeping the aisles.

A Cathedral of Celluloid

The "Empire" in the title refers to a sprawling, Art Deco cinema in Margate, on the north coast of Kent. It’s 1980, and the building is a ghost of its former self; the top floors are shuttered, colonnaded ballrooms now inhabited only by pigeons and shadows. Olivia Colman plays Hilary, the theater’s duty manager. She’s precise, lonely, and quietly grappling with a mental health diagnosis that the film handles with a jagged, uncomfortable realism.

Hilary doesn’t actually watch the movies. She just manages the ritual of them. Her life is a loop of mundane tasks and a degrading sexual arrangement with her boss, Mr. Ellis, played by a wonderfully slimy Colin Firth. Then comes Stephen (Micheal Ward), a young Black man joining the staff who carries a warmth that Hilary’s life lacks. Their connection is the heartbeat of the film, and it’s a testament to the actors that a relationship with such a massive age and experience gap feels as tender as it does. Micheal Ward is a revelation here—he has to play "hope" in a town that is increasingly infested with skinheads and National Front flyers, and he does it without ever feeling like a trope.

The Colman Constant

If you’ve seen a movie in the last five years, you know that Olivia Colman is essentially a cheat code for emotional resonance. She can do more with a twitch of her lip than most actors can do with a five-minute monologue. In Empire of Light, she is asked to pivot from catatonic depression to manic joy, and she does it with a terrifying vulnerability. There is a scene where she attends a premiere at her own theater—a big, local event—and she goes off-script in a way that made me want to crawl under my seat.

But here is where the movie stumbles. Mendes, writing solo for the first time, throws a lot of "Importance" at the wall. We have Hilary’s struggle with lithium and bipolar disorder. We have Stephen’s experience with the rising tide of racism in Thatcher’s England. And then we have the "magic of cinema" theme, personified by Toby Jones as Norman the projectionist. Toby Jones is great, as always, playing the booth like an instrument, but the film struggles to bridge these themes. The movie tries to fix systemic racism with a screening of Being There, which is basically like trying to treat a gunshot wound with a scented candle. It’s well-intentioned, but it feels a bit naive.

Why the Empire Fell

Despite the pedigree—Mendes, Deakins, Reznor & Ross on the score—Empire of Light basically vanished upon release. It was a victim of a "prestige glut" where audiences, still wary of returning to theaters for anything that didn't involve capes or fighter jets, simply didn't show up for a mid-budget drama about sadness by the sea. It cost about $13 million and didn't even make that back at the global box office.

In the era of streaming dominance, a film like this often gets lost in the "For Your Consideration" shuffle. It feels like it was engineered to win Oscars, and when the buzz didn't materialize, the marketing machine just stopped. That’s a shame, because while the script is messy, the craft is impeccable. Roger Deakins makes the gray, wintry light of the English coast look like a religious experience. The way he captures the blue hour on the theater’s roof makes you understand why Hilary and Stephen would retreat there to hide from the world.

Is it a masterpiece? No. It’s too scattered for that. But as a character study of a woman trying to find her footing while the world shifts beneath her, it’s deeply moving. It’s a film that demands you sit still, which is a big ask for modern audiences, but the rewards are there if you're willing to look past the occasional clunky metaphor.

Ultimately, I find it hard to be too cynical about a movie that treats a projection booth with the same reverence as a high altar. It’s a messy, beautiful, slightly confused film that captures a very specific moment in British history. While it might not be the "instant classic" Searchlight Pictures wanted it to be, it’s a quiet, soulful piece of work that deserves a life beyond its disappointing box office receipts. Just bring your own tissues—and maybe a little less salt on the popcorn.