Tag: sam mendes

Empire of Light

Posted on by victorfraga

Set in a medium-sized English coastal town in the years of 1980 and 1981, Empire of Light transports viewers back to a time when movie theatres were just beginning to collapse. This degradation is superbly epitomised by the titular cinema, a grandiose building still glitzy on the first level, where an elegant lobby, fitted with burgundy carpet and intricate wooden walls, leads to the two functioning screening rooms. The upper half of the building, on the other hand, is the picture of decadence: two abandoned projection screens and a large lobby with tables overlooking the seafront are mostly inhabited by pigeons. The Empire Cinema is the real-life Dreamland Cinema, part of an old-fashioned, vaguely precarious and yet still functioning fairground of the same name (the fun rides are also briefly featured in the movie)

The unidentified town is Margate, on the Isle of Thanet in in Southeastern England, a place that is indeed bewitchingly decadent, a present-day town that looks exactly like Britain 40 years ago. This was presumably a requirement, since the film was made on 35mm and therefore without CGI. The movie theatre isn’t the only old-fashioned building. A concrete high-rise council block, grey and ugly as a stormy sky, serves as housing to one of the protagonists. The outcome is a cinematography bursting with nostalgia and yet entirely palpable, the first one of Empire of Light‘s biggest achievements.

The story revolves around around cinema duty manager Hilary (Olivia Colman). She is a charge of a troupe of colourful employees: usher Neil (Tom Brooke), projectionist Norman (Toby Jones), heavy make-up wearing, Siouxsie and the Banshees loving Janine (played by Hannah Onslow; whose function I could never work out), new ticket collector Stephen (Micheal Ward), and others. Hilary has a sexual relationship with the theatre’s owner, a cranky 60-something married man called Donald (Colin Firth). Their carnal interaction is entirely devoid of tenderness and intimacy, with a grimacing Hilary bending over her boss’s desk.

One evening, Hilary still a kiss from the young, handsome – and black – Stephen. The two quickly develop a romantic bond, spiced by steamy sex on the abandoned lobby overlooking the seafront. But the pigeons aren’t the only ones to witness their actions. Neil warns Hilary that she should be more cautious, as more people could find out about her newfound romance. Hilary and Stephen have to overcome two barriers in order to be together: racism and ageism. The former shows its ugly teeth in the shape of a bigoted cinema-goer and, more significantly, in a far-right, skin-head motorcade/rally just outside the cinema. The latter is a sentiment intrinsic to both lovers. Hilary realises that their age gap could hinder their relationship, and challenges Stephen whether he is embarrassed of her.

Empire of Light‘s second biggest achievement is Colman’s performance. She blends female desire with anger to perfect results. Hilary is resolute and yet clumsy and dysfunctional. She finds vey unorthodox ways of achieving her objectives. This will often land her in trouble with the social services, and at the mercy of mental health doctors. She is consistently prescribed lithium, a drug widely used at the time as an anti-depressant and also a mood stabiliser. The story climaxes during the gala screening of Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson, 1981), a British historical drama also dealing with the topic of racism (namely: anti-semitism) set in the nearby coastal town of Broadstairs (incidentally, one scene of Empire of Light is also filmed there).

The film’s soundtrack provides a snapshot of the music scene at the time, with songs Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Siouxsie being played by our characters. There are allusions to ska and black music. The music score is fairly sentimental and cutesy, and I was surprised to find out that it was signed Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The sounds of Empire of Light and tot even remotely reminiscent of the Nine Inch Nails act, which the two artists form.

Despite the vintage cinematography and Colman’s performance, Empire of Light is not a masterpiece. A dull script, penned by Mendes himself, prevents both the romance and the racial issues from developing full-blossom. The final quarter of this 115-minute, highly ambitious drama is mostly redundant, with the story dragging on for longer than needed. It doesn’t say anything particularly new and audacious about love and politics. In fact, the film is timid in challenging the very prejudices that it set out to do in the first half. This is partly because the chemistry between Colman and Ward is lukewarm, and also because the movie never proposes a resolution to their unrequited relation. The ending is lifeless and cold.

Empire of Light is in cinemas on Monday, January 9th.

1917

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

When the trailer for 1917 debuted, it bore a similar aesthetic to Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017) – not an entirely bad thing, but not the preferred style, either. I had shared the minority view that Nolan’s film was, in the words of The Guardian’s David Cox, ‘bloodless, boring and empty’. The menace and spectacle of its opening quarter petered out into litany of tepid peril overcast by Hoyte van Hoytema’s gloomy cinematography.

Thankfully, 1917 makes a quick break from these facile similarities with its tight pace, raw emotion and staggering camerawork. It is one of those rare films where, as a reviewer, you risk getting stuck in a rabbit hole of superlatives – so here goes it.

Firstly, the performances, though good, are not what drive this film. It is instead an intensely sensory experience that demands to be seen on the biggest and best system. Roger Deakins’s masterful camerawork bobs and weaves through the trenches of the Western Front in seemingly one unbroken take, capturing the men of the British Expeditionary Force with a visceral fluidity. After ten years of excellent cinema, 1917 will be counted amongst the decade’s most impressive and absorbing.

Everyone in this film is under overwhelming pressure – few more acutely than Lance Corporals Blake (Dean Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay). The young men are ordered to carry a message across enemy territory that will prevent a British battalion of 1,600 men, which includes Blake’s brother, from charging into a death trap.

Chapman and MacKay both give strong performances. Blake is a chipper lad given to jocular anecdotes and crude jokes, while Schofield, apparently the more experienced of the two, has developed a war-weary reserve. There’s a mutual respect and affection for each other, though, and their extraordinary experiences only makes their bond stronger.

This tight, simple premise and character dynamic sets the stage for one of the most remarkable portrayals of combat in recent memory. It may not have the thematic depth of Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957), but Mendes conveys the all-consuming stress, misery and exhaustion of total war. Many of the men Blake and Schofield meet are in varying depths of hate and prostration, but most are driven by a stoic resolve to keep moving forward, whatever their dismal fate may be.

Key to the film’s immersion is Dennis Gassner’s epic set design. We follow the troops as they traverse yard after yard of dank trenches, and the scope becomes even more grimly arresting when they scale the parapet, entering a vast, ghoulish wasteland of sodden craters, splintered trees and mangled bodies. Indeed, there are moments across No Man’s Land that resemble the body horror of David Cronenberg; the attention paid to the grisly details of death and decay is disturbing as it is appropriate.

Inspired by the stories of his grandfather, director Sam Mendes and DOP Roger Deakins have made the biggest and best First World War film of the 21st century. This is important, because for better or worse, cinema has the power to reinvigorate history, to spread knowledge and awareness. After all, the First World War has been overshadowed by the conflict that followed, with its clearer moral compass and even greater level of destruction. Mendes’s film, while not a depiction of the war’s terrible stalemate, will nonetheless assault one’s senses and give them some idea of what their forebears endured in Britain’s deadliest war.

1917 is in theatres Friday, December 10. On VoD on Monday, June 1st. On Netflix on Friday, September 10th (2021)