by Nathaniel R
Olivia Colman standing in front of the titular character, a movie theater named "Empire"
You know it's August when the Oscarrific trailers start hitting. Today's newbie is something we're very curious about. The film is Sam Mendes' Empire of Light starring Olivia Colman and A Movie Theater (from the looks of it). What a perfect combo that is... though the last time Colman tried to watch a movie onscreen things did NOT go well (remember that great but ferociously frustrating scene in The Lost Daughter?). In addition to being a movie about movies, Empire of Light also has racial and romantic elements in the drama.
The gorgeous trailer and a Yes No Maybe So breakdown after the jump...
YES
This lovely narration
Film. It's just static frames with darkness inbetween. But there's a little flaw in your optic nerve. So if I run the film at 24 frames per second, it creates an llusion of motion, an illusion of life. So you don't see the darkness. Out there, they just see a beam of light and nothing happens without light.
... yeah, we're as much a sucker for movies speaking directly to the magic of the movies as Oscar voters are so we felt like tearing up from the first frames and from the speech that Toby Jones is giving as he threads a projector.
Speaking of movies, this is how you know it's set in 1981 -- the marquee here reads:
Tonight Chariots of Fire Gala Premiere
Very presumptuous of Sam Mendes to include a Best Picture winner in the narrative. Maybe he's feeling really confident after 1917. And come to think of it, why shouldn't he?
Olivia Colman can do no wrong and now we'll be seeing her in a romantic drama, which looks to be quite different than the last handful of years of celebrated role like a solitary professor on a fraught vacation (Oscar nom), a daughter losing her father to alzheimers (Oscar nom), two very different queens of England in different centuries (Oscar win & Emmy win), or a pretentious judgmental artist (Emmy nom)
NO
n/a
MAYBE SO
There are so many questions that won't be answered until we're seeing the movie. This is a good thing as original material is always more exciting to wonder about than franchises and IP because you honestly don't know what you're going to get! What is the story? This is the first film Sam Mendes has written solo and only the second he's written at all (after 1917). From a writing perspective this appears to be much more ambitious than the one-mission focused linearity of 1917. How well will he braid all these presumed elements we're seeing: racism, an interracial and intergenerational romance (Small Axe's Micheal Ward is 23 years younger than Olivia Colman), and the magic of cinema? Were the 80s this racially fraught in England (we honestly don't know as Americans)? Will the contemplative hypnotic tone of the trailer be the tone of the entire film and if it is will it be too indulgent or earnest? Or slip into self-regard?
In short, a lot of how effective this is will come down to execution of course and we can't know that until we're watching the picture. All that said the team here is extremely promising and we are a big ol' yes.
Oscar winner Sam Mendes directing, Oscar winner Olivia Colman headlining, Oscar winner Roger Deakins behind the camera, Oscar winner Lee Smith editing, 15 time Oscar nominated Thomas Newman on score, Oscar winner Alexandra Byrne on costumes, and Emmy winner Mark Tildesley on production design. That's a lot of prestige!
What'cha think? Are you a yes no or maybe so at this point in time?