Empire of Light – Film Sheet

Sam Mendes pays tribute to his new movie by watching the movie. gloom The Empire of Light The film is about an unexpected love between two film workers, but the story about the importance of society remains superficial.

In the age of movies about making movies – think souvenir (2019), Babylon (2022) and Alfabelman (2023) – Comes Sam Mendes (American beauty1999; 19172019) with a poem to watch the movie. gloom The Empire of Light It is located in a cinema on the English south coast. Set against the backdrop of white nationalist protests in the 1980s, Sam Mendes tells a sordid story about how the love between two movie theater employees manages to transcend their mutual differences.

Principal Hilary (Olivia Colman again as a grieving woman) struggles with her mental health. Young new employee Stephen (Michelle Ward) faces racism. It’s clear what Mendes wants to say with the story of the unlikely love between the two; In a way, they’re both outsiders working in a place that can, at best, foster feelings of empathy and community. But the similarities between their struggles fail.

Mendes takes two socially related issues–women are driven to psychological breakdown by men, and blacks are subjected to racism–and tries to extract a universal lesson from them. But while community and teamwork can help women with mental problems, they are not a panacea for racism. This is where the story stumbles: Mendes’ lack of understanding of his characters’ struggles—particularly those of Stephen and his mother, but ultimately Hillary—leads to a sketchy narrative.

This becomes even more apparent when the main character suddenly changes hands in the middle of the movie. Because while Hilary’s lithium-soft perspective masks the film’s most obvious problems, Steven’s sharper perspective brings them to the fore. Thus, the scenes revolving around him as the main character could no longer hide the shortcomings of the script.

In beautiful pictures, those The Empire of Light Thanks to camera director Roger Dickens, who is known, among other things The Big Lebowski (1998), Fargo (1996) and There is no country for old men (2007), no compelling story could be found. Instead, there are obvious metaphors: the neglected upper floor of a cinema, a dove with a broken wing healed by Stephen’s hands, an explanation of the brief moments of black between frames that go unnoticed when a movie plays. It results in an empty movie, of which only a vague feeling of sadness remains.

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