I beg Sam Mendes to stop writing his own scripts: Empire of Light reviewed

Sam Mendes’s Empire of Light, which he wrote as well as directed, is billed as a ‘love letter to cinema’ although, alas, in this instance cinema does not appear to love him back. The magic of film-going is the theme but there is almost no film-going in it and what there is isn’t magic. Peculiarly soulless, pedestrian and plodding, it is, however, wonderfully shot by Roger Deakins. It also stars Olivia Colman so now we can deal with that all-important question: can Olivia Colman save any film she’s in? No, is the answer. But it is probably a hundred times better than it would have been without her.

The movie is set in the early 1980s in a magnificent but fading art-deco cinema, the Empire, situated in a British seaside town that isn’t specified but is Margate, I think. There’s a close-up of the inscription above the entrance – ‘Find where light in darkness lies’ – just in case there was any doubt where this was wanting to go. The cinema’s deputy manager is Hilary (Colman), who is dedicated to her job, and well-liked, but sad and lonely because older, single women in film are always sad and lonely. We watch her eat Christmas dinner on her own, as is the older, single woman’s fate. The Empire’s other staff include Mr Ellis (Colin Firth), the manager, Norman (Toby Jones), the projectionist, and Janine and Neil who are so thinly  written I can’t be bothered to look up who plays them. (Apologies.)

There’s a new employee, a young fella, Stephen (Micheal Ward), of Caribbean heritage, who strikes up a relationship with Hilary, and wants to be an architect.