Make a movie about the power of cinema and you’d better be sure that the evidence supports your thesis. At best, you might wind up with something rich and personal like The Fabelmans, and at worst, well, you’re stuck with Babylon, the kind of self-congratulatory ode to the dream factory that makes a pretty good case for watching TV on a smartphone (if not burning down your local multiplex altogether).
For British filmmaker Sam Mendes, the Oscar-winning director of American Beauty, Skyfall and, more recently, the WWI drama 1917, the movies still matter – as an art form that can generate empathy, inspire emotion, and maybe even transcend a reality that’s confusing and sometimes hostile.
He stages his latest drama, Empire of Light, in and around a cinema, a grand, old Art Deco structure clinging to existence in a dreary seaside town in the south of England. In the film’s opening moments, it seems to come back to life before our eyes, regenerating from faded relic to warm, twinkling monument to a more romantic era.
