Empire Of Light (2023)

Genre: Romance/Drama
Time: 2h
Director: Sam Mendes


Quick Summary: A romance develops in a beautiful old cinema on the south coast of England in the 1980s.


This was very messy, and nothing really mattered in the end.

The cinematography is what held up this film mostly as well as Olivia Colman. It really knows how to frame its shots and give us a wide view of our landscapes, all with warm tones of orange, yellow and brown. Overall it was a very pretty film to look at, and it knew what it was doing that way.

Olivia Colman even though she was given personally an awful script and character to play, she really brought her all to it. There was one scene where she goes on an intense angry rant and she expresses so much raw anger it, I was very much impressed. I do wish they developed her characters properly and showed the downfall more because honestly I was extremely disappointed and confused by it.

The score as well was also something I really enjoyed. A lot of instrumental and splashes of Ska punk music, it fit right in with the film.

Now the plot is incredibly choppy, the first half of the film doesn't matter by the second half. It's like they changed their mind halfway. There's an extremely forced relationship at the start which had zero chemistry, which then is nearly forgotten by the end. This makes a lot of the first hour uncomfortable in certain scenes. Everything you're shown has little to no development, it's a thing and then it's gone. I would have loved to see the development of Olivia's character's downfall or even the tension of racism grow a bit more but again I was very disappointed. A lot of the time I was thinking, why is this happening or why are they doing that.

Another thing I disliked is that for a film based mostly in a cinema, you would think there would be a lot more film references. I counted like Four good ones. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they didn't shove it down my throat with "Hey look at this reference!" a million times, but I would have liked it a bit more.

This is a very mediocre movie that didn't really impress me much. It's a bit bare and sloppy, and the romance was very pointless in the end.

5/10

"All these people. I'm the only one who knows the truth. Do you understand me? I'm the only one!"