Empire of Light

Director: Sam Mendes (UK, USA). Year of Release: 2022

1980, the Kent coast. The Empire is a grand old cinema which looks over the beach. It’s Christmas Eve and the cinema workers are discussing what they’re doing that evening. The younger ones, which is most of them, are going out to various parties. Duty manager Hilary says that she doesn’t really fancy going out. Later we see her with a plate of generic meat and sprouts in front of her with a single cracker by its side.

Hilary is well-read, particularly in poetry. She helps projectionist Norman with a Waste Land based crossword clue, and throughout the film quotes Tennyson, Auden and Larkin. Every so often, Hilary’s boss Mr. Ellis invites her into his office so he can joylessly fuck her over his desk. Hilary goes out to a restaurant to read a thick book and drink wine. When Ellis enters accompanied by his wife, it is Hilary who has to mumble excuses to the waiter about another appointment and slip out.

Hilary doesn’t have much of a social relationship with her co-workers, but when a new worker Stephen arrives, she starts to become more attentive. Stephen wants to study architecture, but he failed to get onto the course he applied for. While his friends have all moved on to Uni, he’s been left in the Last Resort. Hilary and Stephen thus have a common bond as people who don’t really want to be there, but have nowhere else they can go.

Maybe I should have mentioned that Stephen is Black and 1980s Kent is very white. When Hilary is showing him round the cinema, he sees a sign saying No Entry. He (clunky metaphor alert) persuades Hilary to take him up the stairs. There she shows him two extra screens which they can no longer afford to run. They find a pigeon with a broken wing which Stephen (even more clunky metaphor alert) nurses back to health and releases through the window,

A week later, the staff are discussing what they’re doing for New Years Eve. Hilary says she usually sits on the roof of the cinema and just watches the fireworks. When Janine, one of the younger ticket collectors, invites Stephen to go out dancing, Hilary excuses herself and removes her newly applied lipstick. Stephen does go dancing but leaves early. He didn’t know any of Janine’s friends and everyone was staring. He joins Hilary on the cinema roof, where she impulsively kisses him.

A relationship starts, which defies several “common sense” expectations. Hilary is much older than Stephen, and let’s be thankful that for once a film shows an older woman having a relationship with a younger man. There’s also the race thing – and while Hilary seems to be genuinely non-racist, she is naively unaware of discrimination. The least emphasized, but equally important, difference is that of class. Although they share a workplace, they inhabit different worlds.

Through Stephen, Hilary learns about racism. First, she witnesses him being harassed by the local skinheads. Later he tells her about the New Cross fire, where several Black people died after an arson attack on a party, and the police didn’t respond. This is all new to Hilary, although the events were in the news when the film is set. Later, when Stephen and Hilary go to the beach, he instinctively removes his arm from her shoulders when a white man gets on the bus.

Empire of Light uses a very conservative form – that of the period drama. Most such films avoid much reference to social developments in the time in which they are set – partly because they are usually populated by middle- and upper-class white people who are generally less affected by social change. As if to emphasize this point, Hilary’s leering boss is played by Colin Firth, star of the atrocious The King’s Speech, which personifies the élitism of this genre.

On the one hand, this means that little in Empire of Light is truly surprizing, On the other, Hilary’s rude awakening into the realities of race and class mean that we are confronted with issues usually absent from the genre. Unlike many period dramas, Empire of Light does not sentimentalise it’s period. This is obvious with Stephen’s experiences of racism, but we also see aspects of it in Hilary’s experience with depression, to which her doctor’s reaction is to give her more lithium.

Some nostalgia is allowed. Every so often, outside shots of the cinema show this week’s film – The Blues Brothers, Raging Bull, Being There. And the perfectionist projectionist Norman (Toby Jones playing Toby Jones) waxes lyrical about the craft of a job which has since been made redundant by digitalisation. This is slightly dangerous for writer/director Sam Mendes who seems to be implicitly saying that films produced 40 years ago were largely superior than those today – including his own.

There is a similar sense of nostalgia in the diegetic music. Stephen is enthused by Two Tone, and there is a breathtaking sense of something new and vibrant when Hilary puts The Specials’ Do Nothing on her record player. Hilary’s usual musical taste is older, but again, Dylan’s It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) is put to good effect to soundtrack her mental breakdown, while Cat Stevens’ holy and bland Morning Has Broken is used to contrast with a violent intrusion in her house.

Empire of Light does not always work, and occasionally it feels like we are being given a simplified lesson that Racism is Bad. It does not take many risks – which no film should have to do, but this does mean that it lacks the imagination of the very greatest films. But it is much better than it has any right to be, and confronts serious issues with a lightness of touch that makes you feel for the characters. It’s not perfect, but it’s something to watch while you’re waiting for perfect to come along.