“Empire of Light,” a new drama from director Sam Mendes, takes almost two hours to deliver the same magic-of-the-movies message Nicole Kidman’s AMC advertisement drove home in just one minute and one second.
Set in 1981, Olivia Colman plays Hilary Small, a lonely duty manager at a Margate cinema called The Empire. She is fastidious, detail oriented and on top of every little thing, even if she doesn’t really care for the movies she shows in their beautiful Art Deco auditoriums. “They’re for the customers,” she says.
Her personal life is as messy as her work life is ordered. An illicit affair with her boss, Mr. Ellis (Colin Firth), the theatre’s general manager, is a study in power imbalance and an unnamed mental illness leaves her unable to sleep and reliant on lithium to maintain equilibrium.
Stephen (Micheal Ward), a new theatre employee, fits in perfectly with the others, Neil (Tom Brooke), punk rocker Janine (Hannah Onslow) and projectionist Norman (Toby Jones) but really sparks with Hilary, even though she is many years his senior.
At the theatre romance blossoms between them, but in the outside world the rise of the National Front troubles Stephen, and he is regularly harassed by skinheads simply because he is a Black man living in Britain.
As Mr. Ellis prepares to host the regional gala premier of “Chariots of Fire,” events conspire to change the nature of Hilary and Stephen’s relationship, and perhaps the rest of their lives.
“Empire of Light” takes on a lot but does not seamlessly blend its many ideas into a whole. A study of racism, mental illness, power structures and the transformative power of the movies, it is splintered into too many pieces to work as a cohesive story. When Mendes focusses his camera on Hilary and Stephen the movie finds its power, when he does not, it drifts.
Colman, in the film’s most demanding role, once again proves her remarkable ability to inhabit a character. Hilary is a complex person, and as her depression grips, she boards an emotional rollercoaster. Colman carefully and sensitively portrays that aspect of Hilary’s life in a terrific performance, filled with humanity and sympathy.
Opposite Colman in the film’s best scenes is Ward. As Stephen, in a career making performance, he brings empathy to the film. In one of his early moments, he helps a pigeon with a broken wing. That action could have served as an overworked metaphor, given his budding relationship with the damaged Hilary, but instead establishes Stephen’s innate decency in a world that does not always return the favor. Conversely, Ward’s steeliness comes through in several scenes of outrageous racism.
At its heart “Empire of Light” is a love letter to film and grand old movie palaces like The Empire. But once again, Mendes uses the metaphors like a jackhammer on concrete. In an impassioned speech, Toby Jones, who calls the theatre’s projectors his “babies,” explains the magic of the movies to Stephen. “Still images with darkness in between,” he says. “If I run them at 24 frames a second, you don’t see the darkness.” Jones delivers the line with breathless reverence, as if the idea that film as a panacea for all that ails us was something new instead of a clunky metaphor. The “Cinema Paradiso-esque” veneration is well intended, but, given the film’s essaying of racism and mental illness, feels overstated and trite.
Like the archeological excavation that lies at the center of “The Dig,” a new drama starring Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes and now streaming on Netflix, the movie is slow and steady but reveals much if you’re patient.
Based on the 1939 unearthing of a ship burial site containing a bounty of Anglo-Saxon artefacts in Sutton Hoo, near Suffolk, England, “The Dig” stars Mulligan as Edith Pretty, a wealthy widow who hires amateur archeologist Basil Brown (Fiennes) to excavate ancient burial mounds on her property. Auto-didact Brown’s discovery of a treasure trove of priceless artefacts attracts the attention of the toffs at the British Museum, who insist on taking control of the dig. As World War II looms and Pretty’s health worsens, the job takes on a personal and professional urgency.
Unsurprisingly, “The Dig” spends a great deal of time at the excavation but, as the riches of the job reveal themselves, the interpersonal dynamics of the characters take center stage.
As the salt-of-the-earth Mr. Brown, Fiennes is a stoic figure who provides much of the film’s heart and soul. Early on, in an effective but clumsy metaphor, he is revealed to be the film’s real treasure after he is accidentally buried, swallowed up by the dig, and unearthed by his frantic co-workers. His presence is the film’s catalyst for a study of class and of respect born of hard work and study. He even becomes a father figure for Pretty’s son Robert (Archie Barnes). Fiennes plays him with an appealing mix of decency and stubbornness.
Mulligan’s chaste, but deeply felt relationship with Mr. Brown, is nicely played but as the ensemble cast grows to include the British Museum folks, the snobby Charles Phillips (Ken Stott), John Brailsford (Eamon Farren), Stuart Piggott (Ben Chaplin) and his young wife Peggy (Lily James) and Pretty’s cousin Rory Lomax (Johnny Flynn), she takes a backseat as an illicit romance blossoms. She is, predictably, very good, but as her health declines so does her dominance of the story.
“The Dig” confronts big issues but maintains an intimate feel. It’s not a story of archeology, although James is shown lovingly dusting dirt encrusted artefacts. The portrayal of class and impending war never overshadow the more relatable topics of legacy and teamwork. It’s a quiet movie, one filled with longing looks where much is left unsaid, but nothing is ambiguous.
Helen Mirren trades in Queen Elizabeth’s tiara for army fatigues in “Eye in the Sky,” a drone drama that examines the legal, military, moral and political ramifications of an unmanned aerial vehicle bombing on some high value targets in the war on terror.
Mirren is Colonel Powell, an English military intelligence officer charged with tracking down and dispatching British national-turned-terrorist in Nairobi, Kenya. When the mark is located in a house in a residential area Powell weighs the value of eliminating the threat against the possibility of collateral damage—the unintended death of civilians. When it’s discovered the target is planning a suicide-bombing run, endangering the lives of dozens of people, she makes the decision to “prosecute” the target. Before she can engage, however, she needs the approval of a London-based panel—Attorney General Matherson (Richard McCabe), Foreign Secretary Willett (Iain Glen), Lieutenant General Benson (Alan Rickman) and politician Angela North (Monica Dolan)—and the Las Vegas based drone pilots Watts (Aaron Paul) and Gershon (Phoebe Fox). When an innocent nine-year-old girl sets ups a stand to sell bread just inside the kill zone questions are raised as to whether to pull the trigger or not.
“Eye in the Sky” is talky but also terrifically tense as life and death decisions are boiled down to public relations and political tactics. Wordy and pedantic, it asks the viewer to choose sides and then explore the reasoning behind their decisions. What is worth more, the life of an innocent young girl or the potential loss of life if the suicide bombers make it to a mall? It’s a complicated and morality tinged look at the kinds of choices that are made on an almost daily basis, decisions so common they barely rate a mention in the news anymore.
