Empire of Light is a beautiful, well-acted film that can’t figure out what it’s about. I think it’s too personal or regional or temporal a film for anyone who wasn’t working in a movie theater in 1980 England.

The film is, indeed, about a slightly shabby movie theater in England in 1980. It’s about the people who work there… sorta. It’s about racism… sorta. It’s about mental illness…. sorta… It’s about the magic of the cinema… sorta. Really it’s a lot of this and not nearly enough of any of it.

In theory, the movie stars Olivia Colman as the manager of the theater. We spend most of our time with her but we also hang out with other people very briefly… and then she vanishes for a bit so we then hang out with the film’s audience surrogate, a young black man who is hired onto the theater at the start of the film. But it’s not really his story either… except when it is. And, even then, we don’t learn enough about him or her or anyone else.

There’s a scene in the film where we watch a couple of character skip stones across water… and that’s exactly what I felt the movie was doing. Just skipping stones across the ideas and characters without ever committing to any of them. Or any theme. Or any idea.

Based on the title and setting, you’d think the film was about the power of the cinema. That’s a theme that the film skips and hits on a few times, certainly but it feels like they think they have made a grand point at the end but they just didn’t. They didn’t spend the time to convince us of the transformative nature of film, even if they have a scene that implies it.

But, then again, maybe that’s not what the movie’s about anyway. Whatevs.

I think the film is always well acted and directed and there are certainly individual moments of brilliance and drama. But I kept wondering if the movie was finally getting to the point. And it wasn’t. I came away thinking it was a movie I should have liked, but basically just tolerated.

Score: 74