Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Sam Mendes
Starring: Olivia Colman, Michael Ward, Colin Firth, Toby
Jones, Tom Brooke, Tanya Moodie, Hannah Onslow, Crystal Clarke
I recall Laura Dern recounting an anecdote from the set of
Jurassic Park, where she found herself stuck in some dark space with Steven
Spielberg while waiting for some technical snafu to be sorted. Goofing
around, Spielberg would alternate shining a flashlight onto his face
from above, exclaiming "Love story!", with lighting his face from below
and shouting "Horror movie!" Spielberg has always come across as someone
who lives, breathes and eats cinema, so it's no surprise that even his
social icebreakers revolve around filmmaking techniques. While a
talented director, Sam Mendes has never quite struck me as
someone who shares Spielberg's passion for cinema. He does of course
understand what Spielberg was getting at with his flashlight gag, that
something as simple as the placement of a light source can drastically
alter the mood of a scene, and if he doesn't, his regular
cinematographer Roger Deakins most certainly does.
That's why it's so odd when Mendes and Deakins choose to light the
troubled female protagonist of their latest collaboration,
Empire of Light, from below, thus giving her the appearance of a horror movie villain.
The scene sees Olivia Colman's mentally ill Hilary, the mousy
duty manager of a cinema on the English south coast, suffer a breakdown
while drinking wine in her flat. The light source is a lamp on a table,
which she looms over, its rays of light crawling up her agonised face,
drawing malevolence from every wrinkle and cranny. In this moment Mendes
turns Hilary, a character he's spent the rest of the movie using cheaply
as a vessel for audience sympathy, into a monster. It's as though he
doesn't really know what to do with a character like Hilary, has never
known someone like Hilary, but has gone ahead and written the character
(in crayons) regardless.
The old visual cliché of a troubled female protagonist dunking her head
below the waterline of a bath tub rears its ugly head early on, warning
us that Mendes has no ideas of his own. He may not have ever known a
woman like Hilary, but he's obviously seen movies about them. Dunking
their head underwater – that's what mad women do, right?
Like some well-meaning but annoying neighbour who insists you join them
for Christmas dinner, Mendes equates being an introvert with being
miserable. There are countless scenes of Hilary drinking alone in her
flat while listening to Joni Mitchell, which to me just seems like a
thoroughly pleasant way to spend your evening. But Hilary is a woman
without a man, so obviously she's miserable, right?
Hilary finds a man, or at least a boy, when Stephen (Michael Ward), who is seemingly the only black man in town, starts work as an usher
at the cinema. Despite being in his late teens and very handsome,
Stephen starts an unlikely affair with Hilary, shagging her in the
cinema's now-abandoned upstairs auditorium (the film is set in 1980, the
beginning of the cinema industry's worst ever decade in the UK) while
melting her heart with his Terry Molloy act of caring for a wounded
pigeon. I forgot to mention that Hilary is also shagging her boss, the
cinema's owner, who is played by Colin Firth, which will likely
erode much sympathy from the female contingent of the audience.
Stephen isn't a randomly black character, he's a prop for a half-baked
look at racism, bullied by local skinheads, taunted by customers and
eventually badly beaten. In the only glimpse we get of his home life the
TV is playing a news report about a race riot. Of course it is; he
couldn't just be watching Only Fools and Horses now could
he?
Through Hilary and Stephen's relationship we get two awful tropes – the
white saviour and the magic negro, with each serving to rescue the
other. It's a marriage of convenience. Mendes needs these characters to
come together, but he never sells it as a genuine relationship; it's
just two characters making trite points in between heavy petting
sessions. The message is that it doesn't matter if you're black or
white, and you should be nice to people. If this is all Mendes has to
say he could have just made a Hallmark Christmas movie, rather than
dragging us out to the cinema in this cold weather.
Speaking of the cinema, I'm not entirely sure why the film is set
against the backdrop of a picture palace. It could have been set in a
sausage factory or a car plant and little would have changed. Of course,
there's a schmaltzy "power of cinema" moment where Hilary watches Hal
Ashby's Being There. Unable to evoke any emotion through his own filmmaking, Mendes
resorts to borrowing the work of a real master. Similarly, when he needs
Hilary to make a point he has her recite some classic poetry rather than
rely on his own words or, Heaven forbid, images.
It's similarly unclear why the film is set in 1980, but my guess is
it's because the skinheads serve as a convenient representation of
racism, one the film's target middle class audience can frown upon
without feeling any guilt themselves. Like so many white filmmakers,
Mendes' simplistic idea of a racist is an uneducated working class thug
in bovver boots. While Stephen is harassed by the town's lower class
oiks, he's treated with affection and respect by the film's
well-educated, sensitive middle class characters like Hilary and the
cinema's projectionist (Toby Jones), who takes him under his
wing. Pass me an empty popcorn bucket.
