Tributes to the 7th Art jostle on the big screen. After Steven Spielberg for The Fabelmans and Damien Chazelle for babylonit’s the turn of Sam Mendes, director of Sky Fall And 1917, to pay tribute to movie theaters with Empire Of Light. And more particularly to an English room, in an English seaside resort in the early 1980s.
“The movie theater is not just a place where we vibrate in front of films, says Sam Mendes to 20 minutes. There are also emotions provoked by encounters outside the screenings. In this sumptuous setting, an unstable cashier (played by Olivia Colman) meets a young employee (Michael Ward, a discovery). She must submit to the harassment of her boss played by Colin Firth while being supported by a projectionist played by the brilliant Toby Jones.
Between dream and return to reality
“I show both the backstage of the operation of a cinema and the England of that time”, specifies Sam Mendes. His film is transformed into a love story and a painting of a country overwhelmed by unemployment and terrible racist outbursts. “Cinema only allows you to escape reality up to a certain point”, insists the director. Reality quickly catches up with the heroes of this fresco which takes us from dream to nightmare.
The staging and the sumptuous images do not lead to nostalgia but invite the spectator like his characters to enjoy the present moment and to accept the future. These heroes make you want to take a ticket for their room, a place of life and passions that we take great pleasure in discovering.