June 13, 2023

Day: 13, Movie: 13

Olivia Colman has become one of our best current living actors working, and she brings her best no matter what project she is in. This is a perfect example as today’s June Swoon 2 is Empire of Light, a film that did not receive near the amount of love as many had anticipated.

According to IMDB, “Hilary (Olivia Colman) is a cinema manager struggling with her mental health, and Stephen (Micheal Ward) is a new employee longing to escape the provincial town where he faces daily adversity. Together they find a sense of belonging and experience the healing power of music, cinema, and community.“

There was a lot of good things here. First was the performances, led by Olivia Colman. Michael Ward was excellent as Stephen. There were solid supporting performances from Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Tom Brooke, Crystal Clarke, and Tanya Moodie.

There were also several very good scenes in the film that brought some emotional heft and strong character development. The film looked beautiful too.

This is where things kind of went off the rails. The positives of this film are there, for sure, but there are other issues that drag this down, most of which deal with the story being told.

The film did lack a general narrative throughline. It felt as if it tried to do way too many different things and none of them worked together very effectively. The movie lacked a focus as this film felt as if it were about mental illness, racism, the power of the cinema and theater experience, relationships at the work place, adultery and the use of power to get your way. These all were used and most of them used equally which made the film feel too muddled.

There also seemed to have a couple spots at the end of the movie that could have served as an effective ending, but it kept going back to continue the story. Some times that works, but here it just felt like the movie wasn’t sure how to end.

Empire of Light had its moments and Olivia Colman is, once again, exceptional, but it feels to much of a mess to be a great movie. It is currently passable at best.