By Film Critic Alex Rivera Review – Empire of Light (2022, dir. Sam Mendes) Released: December 2022 (wide), now streaming

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Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light arrives with the weight of high expectations: an Oscar-winning director crafting a heartfelt tribute to cinema, set against the turbulent backdrop of early 1980s Thatcher-era Britain. Starring the incomparable Olivia Colman as Hilary Small, the duty manager of a grand but fading seaside movie palace in Margate, the film promises to weave together themes of mental illness, racial tension, human connection, and the enduring magic of the movies. Yet, despite Colman’s luminous central performance and Roger Deakins’ breathtaking cinematography, the result falls disappointingly short of its ambitious aims. It aspires to be profound and illuminating but ends up feeling dim, unfocused, and oddly superficial.

The story centers on Hilary (Colman), a middle-aged woman quietly unraveling after a previous mental breakdown. She navigates her days at the Empire cinema with weary professionalism, enduring a degrading affair with her married boss, Mr. Ellis (Colin Firth, effectively slimy yet restrained). Into this lonely routine steps Stephen (Micheal Ward), a young Black projectionist trainee full of dreams and facing overt racism from locals and colleagues alike. Their unlikely bond—first professional, then romantic—offers fleeting moments of warmth amid the cold coastal winds. Toby Jones provides gentle comic relief as the veteran projectionist Norman, who waxes poetic about the “persistence of vision” and how light banishes darkness, a metaphor the film leans on heavily.

Mendes, writing solo for the first time, clearly draws from personal nostalgia for the era’s moviegoing experience. The theater itself—Art Deco grandeur, flickering projectors, and classic films like Raging Bull playing on screen—becomes a character. Deakins’ lighting captures the golden glow of celluloid with reverence, turning mundane tasks into visual poetry. Yet the script struggles to integrate its weighty themes. Mental illness is portrayed through Hilary’s manic episodes and hospitalizations, but it feels more like a plot device than a deeply explored condition. Racial unrest, including riots echoing real 1981 events, intrudes sporadically—Stephen endures slurs and violence—but these elements remain peripheral, never fully intersecting with the central romance in a meaningful way.

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Critics have praised Colman’s work, and rightfully so. She delivers a performance of devastating restraint and raw vulnerability, especially in scenes of emotional collapse. Her Hilary is a woman trapped by societal expectations, her pain etched in subtle glances and sudden outbursts. Firth is chilling as the predatory boss, and Ward brings quiet dignity to Stephen. But the ensemble’s excellence can’t salvage a narrative that feels scattered. The film wants to say something grand about cinema’s power to heal or connect, yet its message boils down to platitudes: movies offer escape, light triumphs over darkness. It doesn’t probe deeper into how films reflect or challenge the era’s social fractures.

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On Rotten Tomatoes, Empire of Light holds a mixed 71% critic score (with a consensus calling it “disappointingly mundane” despite fine performances), and audience reactions are similarly divided—some moved by the tenderness, others frustrated by its slow pace and lack of cohesion. Metacritic sits around 58, reflecting the divide: beautiful to look at, but narratively underwhelming.

Mendes has made masterpieces (American Beauty, 1917), but here the ambition outstrips execution. The film gestures toward importance—Thatcherism’s divisions, mental health stigma, racism—without saying much substantive. It romanticizes the cinema as a sanctuary while ignoring how the medium itself can perpetuate or confront those very issues. In the end, Empire of Light is a handsome, well-acted drama that lingers visually but fades thematically. It’s not the shining beacon it aspires to be; it’s more like a flickering bulb—pretty, but ultimately insufficient.

One line from the film sums up the frustration: a character urges Hilary to let cinema “transport” her from misery. Viewers might feel the same plea toward the movie itself—and find it wanting. Colman’s star turn is worth the ticket, but don’t expect revelations about the times, race, mental illness, or the moving pictures. It’s a quiet disappointment in a loud package.