Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light has a breathtaking new trailer that expertly establishes light and darkness as themes in the film before its global debut at the Toronto Film Festival.
In the opening voiceover of the recently released footage, Toby Jones, who plays a projector operator, says “Film. It’s just still images with black spaces in between them… but if I run the film at 24 frames per second, it gives the impression of motion and life, and you don’t see the black spaces. Mendes writes his own love letter to film while expertly crafting a love tale between Olivia Colman’s Hilary and Michael Ward’s Stephen in and around a gorgeous old theatre on the South Coast of England in the 1980s.
The trailer elaborates, saying, “And nothing happens without light:” “An illusion of life, so you don’t notice the darkness.” In Empire of Light, Colman plays Hilary, a theatre employee who has to open the theatre every day and watch the concession booth. She has a complicated history and struggles with mental health, neither of which she is willing to discuss. Colman, based on the trailer, does a fantastic job of portraying a lady whose feelings are taboo in the culture in which she lives. To put it simply, racism was rife in 1980s Britain, and Stephen (played by Ward), a young Black guy and new employee at a film company, struggled with it. Both have been hurt by aggressiveness they had no choice but to endure, and they find solace in one another.
Unfortunately, they work at an Empire Cinema, therefore their romance won’t be able to endure indefinitely like the movies. Colman, Ward, and Jones weren’t the only big names in Hollywood involved with this film; Tom Brooke, Tanya Moodie, Hannah Onslow, Crystal Clarke, and Colin Firth all made appearances. Mendes is directing his own screenplay and producing with Pippa Harris. Mendes reunites with cinematographer Roger Deakins (Skyfall) to bring the film’s enchanted visuals to life on screen. Deakins has shot such films as The Shawshank Redemption, A Beautiful Mind, Blade Runner 2049, and many more. After 2019’s acclaimed favourite 1917, starring George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman, Mendes returns with Empire of Light.
Mendes was nominated for an Oscar for his direction of the World War I drama, which received a total of ten nominations. The epic was a commercial success as well, earning $384 million worldwide and $159 million in the United States alone. Empire of Light will make its UK premiere on October 12 at the BFI London Film Festival, after its premiere at TIFF. There will be a simultaneous release in the United States and the United Kingdom of the film on December 9 and January 13, respectively.