It is no longer the time for “cinema magic”. Sam Mendes movie review with Olivia Colman

sit here early eightiesin and about Faded old cinema in A seaside town on the north coast of Kent, Englandthat’s saying MargitAnd The Empire of Light He follows Hillary (Olivia Colman), a woman who runs a cinema and has to deal with herself Psychological healthAnd Steven (Michael Ward), a new black employee who dreams of escaping from this rural town where he faces daily ordeals. Hilary and Stephen both find a sense of belonging through how they feel A sweet and unlikely relationship and experience the healing power of music, film, and society.

American critics received it tepidly if not buoyantly (the Italian was in many cases harsher), and the new film was previously Sam Mendes It is certainly not a work that catches the zeitgeist. At a historic moment, where under the blows and ghosts of the cinema crisis, cinema abroad seems to have clung on Longing for the past as the only possible antidote to the shoals of the present (Even in works of varying tones and styles, from Fablemans to Babylon), The Empire of Light And A film that is at the same time very up-to-date and out of touch with the times (And also we ran out of time, maybe we ran out of time too), Nostalgic and a little conciliatorywith points of sharpness and many angular and snappy shading.

The hero, played by Olivia Colman, works in the cinema, andempireAnd Elected by the film in no uncertain terms a The last bastion of dreams and hopes in a racist and stagnant Great Britain, in full Thatcherism. He does it with one Emotional impudence that it sweet fetish For every nook and cranny of a first-rate cinema (an Art Deco building, next to the seaside amusement park), juxtaposed paradoxically with the desperation and failure of Hillary, whose psychological ideal spares the viewer no discomfort or vulnerability (the cinema director, the Mr. Ellis to Colin Firthbet it all at the premiere of a highly anticipated movie like Glory momentsfor RReviving the cinema after closing two of its four hallsBut he’s a sticky, unpresentable man who sexually exploits Hillary but calls her schizophrenic.)

Juxtaposition of contrasts that bear fruit The Empire of Light unread puzzleAgainst Time Viewers, A masses fatally missed and more or less automatically destined to give way to fierce, if not deliberately hostile, attacks and perceptions. But in his little way, he’s more like A sweet and fuzzy melodrama, which deals with still taboo topics like depression with poignant and even overwhelming poetry. and mental disorders (To what extent can a radically uncomfortable protagonist be accepted, for herself and for others?).

And this works at the same time, with Dark grace, simple and very profoundto wet everything at one fingertips “movie magic” which removes the rhetoric inherent in the type of story being told, to embrace the need for it light up with a light (From the big screen, from the auditorium, from the always commendable photography of Roger DickensThe turbulent, agonizing, jagged darkness of a handful of derailed existences: Live dalliances like “steady frames with darkness in the middle”balanced, just like a cinema seen from a viewing booth, between The illusion of movement and the illusion of life.

Photo: Neil Street Productions, Scout Pictures

Also read: Empire of Light: cinema magic lights up first Italian trailer for Sam Mendes movie starring Olivia Colman

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