'Empire of Light' barely shimmers when it should really shine

Hilary (Olivia Colman) lives alone in a seaside town in '80s England, working as a duty manager for a cinema. Her quiet, ordered life belies a deep well of loneliness. When Stephen (Michael Ward) joins the cinema as an usher and trainee projectionist, the two strike up a clandestine and intense relationship that breathes new life into Hilary. However, her troubled past and the prevalent racism in Thatcher's England soon begin to threaten and undermine their connection...

Sam Mendes' work of late has been geared towards high-octane action and tension. '1917' humanised World War I and turned it into a pulse-pounding assault on the senses. 'Skyfall' and its ugly sister 'Spectre' both brought Daniel Craig's Bond into maturity, yet these have always felt like Mendes taking work rather than seeking it. 'Revolutionary Road', starring his then-wife Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, was a harrowing examination of a collapsing middle-class marriage, while 'Away We Go' was a sweet romantic road movie with John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph. Only 'Road To Perdition' pointed towards his later work, but that was much more of a movie of anti-climaxes than anything else.

'Empire of Light' is as small a movie as Mendes has done in years, and it feels like it's a deliberate act to return to his roots, to reconnect himself with smaller, intimate works. The problem is that it feels like Mendes has forgotten it entirely, and instead relies on his performers to carry him over the line. Olivia Colman is, as you'd expect, terrific in this. She's able to capture so much in a glance or a tiny movement, while her voice quavers and pitches to match. Michael Ward, who has excelled in roles from 'Top Boy' to Steve McQueen's 'Small Axe' series, is on fine form and deserves much more than what this role offers him. Even the supporting cast is an embarrassment of riches here, with Toby Jones playing a crotchety projectionist, while Colin Firth ably plays the sleazy cinema manager.

Yet, Mendes' screenplay never quite manages to grasp the nettle of its own subject matter. The movie is set during the summer of 1981, during the time of the Brixton riots, Chapeltown, Thatcherism, and alludes to all of this without ever really confronting any of it. There are all of maybe two or three scenes in which we see Michael Ward's character faced with any of it, and it's done in such a timid fashion as to make it utterly ineffective. Moreover, the setting itself - a cinema - is almost irrelevant. It could have been a shop, a theatre, a factory, or anywhere where a disparate group of people might work. The cinema is meant to add to the faded romance of it all, the crumbling glamour, being held up by those who believe, but it just comes off as prosaic and flat. 'Chariots of Fire' plays a minor role in the story. A beat with Olivia Colman's character taking in a movie after avoiding it for so long feels like it was dropped in to warrant the setting rather than anything else.

It's a crying shame watching 'Empire of Light' because it has such rich materials to work with, but they're all used in what feels like such deliberately oblique ways. There's such a great cast assembled, and the time period it's set in had such great music and was such a dramatic point in history, yet what comes out from it is a dreary, half-cooked thing. Not even Roger Deakins' cinematography - except for maybe one or two scenes - livens it up. With such a grandiose title, 'Empire of Light' barely shimmers when it could have shone.