FOR many of us, the cinema is more than simply a place to go and watch a film: it's a pathway to another world, a refuge from life's troubles, a community in and of itself.
Empire Of Light, the new film from 1917 and Skyfall director Sam Mendes and the first he's penned by himself, is a love letter to the physical presence of the cinema, its promise of community and respite, as well as a story of mental health, racism and of love in the face of adversity.
Set in the early 1980s in the English seaside town of Margate, it follows Olivia Colman's Hilary, the duty manager of the fictional Empire cinema on the seafront, who is living with an undefined mental illness that sees her experience manic episodes and periods of low mood.
Hilary lives alone, and struggles to find meaningful relationships in her life – she has a malignant relationship with married cinema manager Mr Ellis, played by Colin Firth who describes his character as a "predator", and subdued scenes of her eating Christmas dinner alone suggest she has no family or friends to support her.
That is, except for her chosen family at the Empire, an eclectic mix of misfits and outsiders who find kinship in the cinema.
There's Norman the projectionist (Toby Jones); junior manager Neil (Tom Brooke), music-loving teenager Ruby (Hannah Onslow) and newcomer Stephen (Micheal Ward), a young black man trying to find his place in the world who sparks a romantic connection with Hilary.
"It is about the destination that is a cinema, a sort of palace of dreams, if you like," says director Mendes (57).
"When I grew up, it was the only way you could see a movie, so the experience of going to the movies was a thing in itself.
And it's also about the kind of ad hoc, weird, but beautiful families that you find in these places, and that I found as an only child who didn't really grow up with a family, that I discovered in the theatre and film: these eccentric families, these people who somehow support you, and treat you with love and lack of judgment."
Colman's portrayal of Hilary's mental illness, its ebbs, flows, manic highs and numbing lows, is sensitive, nuanced and masterful. Subtle changes – a glint in an eye, a smudge of lipstick on teeth, a gaze into the middle distance – show fluctuations in Hilary's mental state, but Colman's performance never feels contrived or exaggerated.
"The approach of it, it's all on the page. And I have to defer to Sam – he wrote it from experiences that he had," explains Colman (48).
"So every step of the way, I had the best research material, you know: 'Sam, what was it like, and what was that like?' Because Hilary is loosely based on Sam's mum."
"I think that mental illness, still there's this sort of weird stigma about talking about it," adds Mendes.
"It's very difficult to describe, you know. If you could describe it, perhaps there would be no reason to make a movie about it. But dramatising it and showing it, how complex it is, and how many different layers there are to it and what the difference is between medicating and no medication.
"And the fact that, you know, if you were to come out of a hospital having recovered from say, cancer, everybody would ask you how you were. But when you come out of a mental health facility, nobody asks you anything.
"That is the big difference, there are very few ways to talk about it that don't feel awkward or embarrassing for the person who suffers."
At the start of the film, we see Hilary at the doctor's discussing her prescription for lithium, a mood stabiliser which she says is making her feel slightly numb.
"She doesn't really feel anything very strongly," says Colman.
"She's going through the motions at work, going through the motions with Mr Ellis. She lives alone, doesn't speak to anyone – it's a pretty lonely existence, and she wants more. She wants to feel more."
Serendipitously, in walks Stephen, who's just been hired at the cinema and immediately sparks a connection with Hilary.
"She's dazzled by him," says Colman.
"She transforms from feeling nothing to feeling tingles. And she comes off her medication and then goes through phases to a point where she's heroic in her mania. I loved playing Hilary because of the different emotional states that we find her in."
"What I loved about playing Stephen was that he has this complex relationship with this older woman, because I've never really seen it on screen before," adds Ward (25).
"And I feel like there's not many people that are going to address something like that, which also needed to be addressed, I think, because it shows that it's not really about age or colour in this instance.
"It's just about how two people connect over things that they love. And I think that's so important."
Of course, being black in 1980s Britain with its overt violent racism, nationwide riots and National Front prominence is far from easy for Stephen and his community.
"1981 in the UK had a very particular socio-political environment," explains Motherland's Tanya Moodie (50), who plays Stephen's mother.
"So, we had the National Front and we had the Rivers of Blood speech, we had the Brixton riots, we had the New Cross fires."
Nevertheless, Ward says of his character Stephen, "he's a young black man, excited by the opportunities in life; he loves people, loves to connect with music and movies, and he refuses to allow an oppressive society to define who he is".
"In the middle of lockdown there was a racial reckoning in the world," adds Mendes.
"We were left alone to contemplate how our own racial politics had been formed, and whether we had fallen down in our attempts to make sure the world was evolving.
"When I wrote the movie there was also another common obsession: we were all worried whether the cinema was going to die, along with live performances.
"So, all of those things have gone into this movie, and in that regard, it's quite raw."
:: Empire Of Light is in cinemas now.
