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Empire of Light(2022)

Movie1h 55mEnglishDrama, Romance

6.8

User Score

49%

Critic Score

Director: Sam Mendes

Writer: Sam Mendes

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Overview

In 1980s coastal England, a duty manager at a seaside cinema tries to hold her life together while living with mental health struggles. When a new employee arrives, their growing connection unfolds amid workplace pressures and a tense social climate, with the cinema offering both refuge and challenge.

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Review Summary

Pros: strong performances; nostalgic cinema setting; thoughtful social themes | Cons: unfocused story; too many topics; uneven emotional pull

Will You Like This?

You may enjoy this if you like intimate, character-driven dramas that mix romance, mental health, and social tension with a nostalgic cinema backdrop; Not for you if you want a tightly focused story or a purely light romance like Away We Go.

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Featured Comments/Tips

dridriov

Fragile relationships between flawed and frightened people in an era of authoritarian social pressure before instant judgment and shame became ubiquitous on social media. One of the year's best. Tune out the noise of the critics and watch it alone if you have to.

hgram

Great performances wasted on an aimless and unfocused screenplay. Sam Mendes is a much better director than he is a writer.

bedipeters

Olivia Colman is awesome. Too bad her performance can't save this truly mediocre film.

Bradym03

"To fuck, or not to fuck." Yes, that's an actual line from the movie. 'Empire of Light' shines the brightest with its dark yellow/goldish cinematography and performances. Other than that, this might be Sam Mende's worst movie. The whole movie talks about the "power" of cinema, etc. However, the power is sadly missing here. Incredibly dreary and tricky to pinpoint what the story is. It's all over the damn place. It follows the themes of mental illness, racism, forbidden love, and escapism. But those aspects are either underdeveloped or poorly executed. Not the worst movie ever made, but it's painfully bland.

Silrog

It's not an outstanding experience. But I actually appreciated how some seemingly 'lose' elements, such as the attack by racists, just represent the random events and obstacles being randomly thrown at people, who just attempt to keep their head over water in their lives.

Kyria Crosszeria

A lovely film about the power of films, and relations with other people. “Last year is dead. Begin afresh.” I do miss those little blops that indicate when to switch reels. I used to try and catch them even when engrossed in the story. That first time jump was so abrupt i thought it was a fantasy for the longest time. The three of them hitting it off THAT well, like a happy polyade? I still think those scenes were weird, any other time jumps felt way more natural.

zxki

Story wise, I have no idea what to rate it. It felt like a bunch of random stories from random people shoved into what I would say is a cinamaticly pleasing experience.

juliosoft

a film about people, with good actors, photography and direction.

Agent24

An absolute beautiful film. Love the cinematography, the setting and especially the score. Olivia Colman delivers a fantastic performance as always.

tvjackson

"I have a situation I need to discuss with you in my office." The situation was the need for suction. Oral suction. The relationships depicted in this movie seem more driven by the screenwriter than by what the characters would ever pick. There is a married male boss having a strange affair with a subordinate female manager and a younger black man having an attraction to that same female manager, who is white, older than him and doesn't seem like anybody he would be interested in. They don't even acknowledge she is old enough to be his mom. She has mental issues and it doesn't turn him off. No I don't know what the point of the movie is, but it seems to suggest not to let the problems of life keep you from seeing the enjoyment in life. The main problems being mental unstableness and racial injustice.

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Featured User Reviews

Saint Pauly

4/10

Like a marshmallow and paperclip beef stew: there's a lot in it but it doesn't go together well. So, at first I thought the film was a tribute to the love of cinema and I was like, Oh, cool. But then I was like, Oh, the movie's about mental health issues, cool. But then I was all, Oh wait, it's about an unlikely romance, ok, cool. But then I was like, Hmm, I think it's an anti-racsim movie? And then I was like, I wish Mendes could focus on one subject and stop head hopping among characters. Whatever, I'll never pass up the opportunity to remind people what anti-vaxxer Eric Clapton said on stage in a concert during the period when this film was set: Do we have any foreigners in the audience tonight? If so, please put up your hands... So where are you? Well wherever you all are, I think you should all just leave. Not just leave the hall, leave our country... I don’t want you here, in the room or in my country. I think we should send them all back. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white! Watch the documentary White Riot instead!

CinemaSerf

0/10

"Hilary" (Olivia Colman) is the shift leader at a grand old cinema living a routine life and largely just going through the motions each day. When the young "Stephen" (a strong and engaging performance from Micheal Ward) arrives, she takes him on a tour of the building and that takes them to the upper echelons of the building - now disused - where they discover an injured pigeon. They also discover something else, and soon are having bit of a clandestine affair. Thing is, she's also having one of those with her boss "Ellis" (Colin Firth) and keeping secrets amongst her small team isn't the easiest! Things come to an head, however, when some fascist thugs are marauding down the local esplanade and they see the young man through the locked doors. Soon, he is in hospital and everyone is having to re-evaluate their relationships and priorities - and it's at this point that "Hilary" comes off the rails a little. Years of resentment and frustration - coupled with a bit of booze - all come to the fore just as her young friend comes to some conclusions about his own future too! Toby Jones is wonderful here as the projectionist, allowing the intensity of the personal stories to be diffused with a nostalgic look back at just how (even as recently as the 1980s) films were synched from a series of projectors, with cue dots and played from reels. He ("Norman") even demonstrates to the enthusiastic young "Stephen" as we go. The themes of racism, tolerance, ageism and ignorance are never far from the surface, though, and essentially this film is a cleverly nuanced piece of drama that uses a cinema - itself a conduit for so many different aspects of human life and behaviour - to serve as the focus for a brief observation of two lives that overlap for a while. It does have some sentiment to it - but for me that was about the old days of cinema gone by; otherwise this is a complex and thought-provoking look at life in Mrs. Thatcher's Britain long before she had had any real chance to mould it...

MSB

0/10

FULL SPOILER-FREE REVIEW @ https://www.msbreviews.com/movie-reviews/empire-of-light-spoiler-free-review-lff-2022 "Empire of Light works best as a love letter to the art of filmmaking and the theater experience. Brilliant performances. Astonishing to behold. Emotional to listen to - score is the technical highlight. Not so captivating narratively, considering that Sam Mendes' first solo script lacks depth in the most important themes. It's a beautiful tribute to the magic of cinema that cinephiles will enjoy, but for viewers less passionate about the 7th art, it might be difficult to genuinely care." Rating: B-

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