Film- Empire of Light

I love everything about Empire of Light. 

Based just into the 1980s around the life of Hillary Small (the never-let-you-down Olivia Colman) who has worked at the Empire forever. 

It has an uncomfortable bassline of racism which sums up that period for me - before my coming of age - and an equally archaic view of mental illness as we see life through Hillary’s eyes.

However, the small team at the Empire cinema in Kent is the only family Hillary appears to have. Empire of Light could easily have been about any of Hillary’s team. I want to know the story of each of them, the projectionist Norman who is in love with film (Toby Jones), the young newcomer (Michael Ward) who really should be an architecture student (and his nurturing mum), the party girl, the quiet one. I ache for them all. Someone write a series of novels based on each of them please.

Not the cinema boss though (Colin Firth playing a bad man), that story has been well told.

We have a delightfully nostalgic look back at the clothes - just coming out of the 1970s and of the music, most notably for me the Specials. Around that time I didn’t understand how skinheads carrying Union Jacks were the ones we walked speedily away from if we spotted in the street and yet here was a mixed-race band on Top of the Pops. Especially poignant as we’ve just lost Terry Hall.

So much of what I love is in Empire of Light: the magic of cinema, music, the seaside, beautiful old buildings, the history lesson, sugary chocolate snacks (I definitely would buy Malteasers if they were still 20p and in a box, not plastic) and dressing up for the hell of it. On top of that, there’s the nostalgia of the original Tupperware boxes (why were they ever round ?) and always the soundtrack

Beautiful, upsetting, funny and magical. If you’re able to catch it, I highly recommend it.

8/10