The Imperial and the Provincial

It’s that time of year when everyone is gearing up for the start of gong season, and after the various upheavals inflicted by the pandemic there are hopeful signs that normal service is being resumed (always assuming you were a fan of normal service in the first place). Amongst the films which have acquired a bit of awards-season momentum are representatives of most of the classic types – biographies and semi-autobiographies (Elvis and The Fabelmans), more challenging and dark borderline-arty fare (The Banshees of Inisherin and Tar) and – of course – a big film about Hollywood itself (Babylon). And there’s also a plucky little British film, eschewing a big budget and expansive story – mainly because the former wasn’t available to pay for the latter – in favour of quality and authenticity. Living falls into this category, and so does Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light.

British films always seem more at ease when they’re actually set some time in the past, and the great thing about the past is that they keep adding new bits to it: Empire of Light is set in 1980 and 1981, which I can actually remember not being the past at all. And yet here those years are, the period backdrop to movie which – at least in part – trades on nostalgia. (Short version: this film made me feel quite old.)

The film is set in Margate on the south coast of England and concerns the lives of the staff of the old-fashioned cinema there, the Empire. The central character is Hilary (Olivia Colman), the duty manager; she is quietly having… how to put it? ‘An affair’ would be overstating things a bit… non-work-adjacent relations with the actual manager, Ellis (Colin Firth, doing one of those studies in petty corruption he’s actually rather good at). There are various other ushers and minions about the place, and also Norman the projectionist (Toby Jones, also thoroughly in his comfort zone). It turns out to be central to the film’s thesis that Norman proves to be something of a sage and a font of wisdom before the story ends, for his job makes him a High Priest of Cinema. It takes a while for us to reach that point, though.

The plot proper gets underway with someone new starting at the cinema – Stephen (Micheal Ward), who is, to coin a phrase, young, gifted and Black. His presence causes a stir amongst the female members of staff at the cinema, but it is the older Hilary who he seems to make the strongest connection with, especially after they explore the disused upper floors of the old building together. But a sour note is entering the national culture and there are all kinds of obstacles to a relationship like theirs…

The critical consensus on Empire of Light seems to be something along the lines of ‘great performances, pity the script isn’t better’, which I think gets it about fifty percent right. The acting is universally excellent – but then we’re at the point where you really expect that from people like Olivia Colman and Toby Jones, they seem genetically incapable of ever giving a bad performance. I’m not entirely sure that dismissing the script of the film (written by Mendes) is really justified.

Here’s the thing: this is clearly intended to be a life-affirming drama about ordinary people, with moments of sadness and poignancy but also joy and hope. So in a very general way it’s shooting at the same targets as A Man Called Otto, which we talked about last time. Empire of Light isn’t as funny as the Tom Hanks film, nor is it as moving, so there’s a sense in which you could say it was less successful. On the other hand – you can watch Otto and within about ten minutes get a strong and accurate sense of which way the film is going to go. That isn’t the case with Empire of Light – there’s essentially a kind of plot twist halfway through which turns it into a slightly different film than it initially seems to be. The twist is carefully set up and doesn’t seem arbitrary or unrealistic, so narratively it works, and it does leave you guessing as to how the rest of the film is going to play out.

I am not going to say that it’s a bad thing for a film to be predictable, as this is sort of one of the joys of genre and often a sign of capable storytelling. But on the other hand, Empire of Light somehow feels more authentic than A Man Called Otto – in real life, things don’t always resolve neatly and happily in the way you might expect them to. It’s also worth pointing out that Mendes’ film never feels sentimental – it’s not emotionally cold, it just doesn’t feel like it’s laying it on with a trowel; perhaps this is a sign of the film’s essential Englishness.

If I have a brick to sling at Empire of Light, it’s that… well, I suppose it’s the fault of the trailer I saw, which features all the big scenes, an epic soundtrack, and narration from Toby Jones that implies that the film is, in some way, about how going to the cinema is somehow a metaphor for life itself. I was quite looking forward to seeing that film – what I ended up seeing was a very well-done drama about recognisable human beings in a particular time and place, but not much more than that. The whole issue of cinema-as-life does make an appearance, quite late on, but it feels like an afterthought – Toby Jones is easily a good enough actor to sell Norman’s various pronouncements of wisdom, but it still stretches credulity a tiny bit that it turns out that one character, despite having worked at the cinema for ages, has never actually watched a film there. (Mendes’ choice of the film they eventually watch, resulting in a transcendent, revelatory moment for them, is an intriguing one.)

I did enjoy Empire of Light quite a lot in the end, simply because it’s very well-acted, well-made, and quite well-written. After his various successes with Bond and 1917, Sam Mendes is probably at the point where one of his films just being a reasonable success, commercially or critically, probably counts as a disappointment. This is a shame. There is surely always a place for a good film, which is what Empire of Light is.