‘Empire Of Light’ Telluride Review: Olivia Colman Is Incandescent In Sam Mendes’ Touching Ode To Movie Theatres

deadline.com:

Like other filmmakers of recent years such as Alfonso Cuaron with Roma, Paulo Sorrentino with The Hand Of God, and Kenneth Branagh with Belfast, Sam Mendes is in a mood to explore his own memories of his formative years, but unlike those films, he doesn’t put his younger self at the center of the story, but he does put his own experience of seeing movies in theatres right up front.

But make no mistake, this is decidedly not the lovingly sentimental Cinema Paradiso, but rather a film that is, at least in part, a valentine to moviegoing in a world of increasing tension and racial strife, a place to get away from the sad realities of life, if only for a couple of hours.Mendes says he has been grappling with the idea of doing a very personal project like this for some time, even at one time considering an autobiographical film, but the pandemic gave him time to reflect and that is where he came up with the idea for the setting, and then where it could go from there.

It is remarkable how much of it is so universally relevant still today, even as it is set 40-some years ago. Mendes, a much-acclaimed film and theatre director, also has a deep love for the palaces in which we watch his work, whether live on stage or in movies, and this film is on that level a loving ode to them, but in its own way.

It also was conceived at a time in lockdown when Mendes wondered whether we would ever even see the inside of a theatre again, a perilous time we are still trying to come out of.