"Empire of Light" Blesses the New Year

My friend Suzanne and I went to Empire of Light on the recommendation of NPR and the reputation of writer/director Sam Mendes. Very glad we did. Also very surprised that a poem by Philip Larkin seems to have had a part in shaping the movie.

Olivia Colman plays Hilary, a white middle-aged middle manager of the Empire Cinema in Margate, England, 1981, who trains Stephen, a new employee played by Micheal Ward. They find common interest in the design of the old theatre and in caring for an injured bird. There are problems: a daily dose of lithium is all that keeps demons of her mental illness at bay, while he feels more vulnerable every week during a surge of racist nationalism in the U.K.

We want these people to make each other happy, and so do their co-workers (except her abusive boss, played by Colin Firth). The projectionist Norman, played by Toby Jones, teaches Stephen how a thin stream of light passing through still pictures at 24 frames per second registers to the human eye as life, and the darkness between frames doesn't show.

So movies are themselves a metaphor for the hope that both of these people need.

A key moment in their relationship occurs at midnight on New Year's Eve. Another key moment is an admission that "last year is dead," conveyed by the "fullgrown thickness" of trees in spring. We hear that message from Hilary's reading aloud of Philip Larkin's poem "The Trees." Larkin's trees are also telling us, "Begin afresh, afresh, afresh."

From a movie that has its share of darkness, it's a sweet message.