Since his directorial debut with American Beauty in 1999, Sir Sam Mendes has made an impressive run of modern classics, from Road to Perdition (2002) to Jarhead (2005) to Revolutionary Road (2008) to Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015) to 1917 (2019); a body of work which lead to the director being knighted by the Prince of Wales in 2020. One thing all of Mendes’ films have in common, aside from the numerous Academy Award nominations and several wins, is that they were written (or co-written in the case of 1917) by someone else. But if his latest efforts are any indication, it seems that things are about to change for Mendes.
After dipping his toes into the pool of contemporary writer-directors like Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino with 1917 (which Mendes wrote with Last Night in Soho screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns), the director has fully submerged himself into the screenwriting process, penning his upcoming period drama, Empire of Light all alone. Though he was not really all alone.
Mendes got fellow Academy Award winner Olivia Coleman to star in Empire of Light as the manager of a cinema in coastal England caught in the middle of racial and political tensions of the early 1980s Thatcher era after the cinema hires a young Black man played by Michael Ward among a supporting cast which includes English heavyweights Toby Jones and Colin Firth. Coleman is already receiving praise from critics for her role, which Mendes essentially wrote for the actress, admitting at a Q&A at the Toronto International Film Festival last week that he only realized that fact midway through writing the script.
Both Its Director and Cinematographer Related Personally to Empire of Light in Distinct Ways
For his first venture as a solo screenwriter, Mendes reunited with cinematographer Sir Roger Deakins (who was also recently knighted by the Prince of Wales for his unbelievable body of work) on a passion project which hit closer to home for both the director and cinematographer than any of their previous collaborations which include Jarhead, Revolutionary Road, Skyfall, and 1917 (which won Deakins his second Best Cinematography Oscar following his win for Blade Runner 2049 in 2017).
For Mendes, Empire of Light is not so much semi-autobiographical as it is sort of autobiographical, and, oddly enough, the same goes for Deakins. The legendary cinematographer related to the film’s setting on a personal level, even more than the writer-director himself. During the same Q&A for the film at TIFF last week, Deakins said:
“When Sam [Mendes] sent this script my wife, James [Deakins], and I were expecting something totally different. And suddenly there’s this script, [Empire of Light] about [an English] seaside town. I grew up by the [English] seaside... I mean, I grew up in the 60s... But there were still bikers. And I remember getting beaten up by the sailors that came to town at the weekend. And the nightclubs. So I just suddenly read something that seemed very connected to my life actually.”
While Deakins related personally to the film’s setting, having grown up in the seaside fishing town of Torquay in Devon (a county in South West England), Mendes, who was raised in London, related more personally to Olivia Coleman’s central character. During that same Q&A at TIFF, Mendes said:
“[Empire of Light] is personal without being autobiographical. [What’s] personal is the journey of Olivia’s character, Hilary is loosely based on the [mental health] journey of my mother... a sort of cycle of medication, coming off medication, elation, mania, then a crash... That was something that haunted me since childhood. But then it was combined with a number of other things. The period, the early 80s, the music that defined me, the movies that defined me, [which] offered me an escape from what was going on at home.”
There is another key collaborator on the film who likely found something to identify with in the mental health struggles of Coleman’s character: Trent Reznor, who co-wrote the original score for Empire of Light along with his composing partner Atticus Ross.
Composer Duo Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross Are Receiving Praise for Their Empire of Light Score
The Nine Inch Nails frontman turned film composer has made public statements in the past about his road to recovery from addiction and anxiety earlier in his career. And in the years since Reznor and Ross first rocked audiences with their Oscar-winning score for David Fincher’s 2010 film, The Social Network, the duo have become the hottest composers in Hollywood next to Hans Zimmer, leading to their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2020. It should come as no surprise, then, that Reznor and Ross are already receiving praise for their score for Empire of Light.
The duo’s electronic soundscapes, which range emotionally from digital overload to haunting beauty, are perfectly poised to usher moviegoers out of the lonely anxiety of the stay-at-home measures of the Covid era and into Sam Mendes’ and Roger Deakins' celebration of the public’s return to cinemas.
Much like what was said back in 2019 about Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, critics are calling Empire of Light Sam Mendes’ love letter to cinema. And yet, unlike Tarantino and his frequent cinematographer Robert Richardson, Mendes and Deakins chose not to shoot their upcoming love letter to cinema on the film stock which the movie features so prominently and with such adoration. The decision to shoot Empire of Light digitally was a no-brainer for Deakins as he was one of the biggest Hollywood cinematographers to abandon shooting on film, beginning with the 2011 sci-fi film starring Justin Timberlake, In Time.
This jump to digital in the early 2010s made Deakins an early adopter of what is now an industry standard decried by the likes of Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, and Paul Thomas Anderson, who have gone as far as forming a 70mm film support group. Speaking to Variety last week at TIFF on the topic of Empire of Light being an affectionate homage to film itself, Mendes said:
“It’s not really just an ode to movie-making. But movie watching, movie showing, going to the movies. I think that when we were in lockdown and in Covid we were fearing that this would go forever. That we would never be able to sit with people in the dark and be taken on an adventure.”
The next adventure that Mendes and Deakins want to take you on begins this December 9th when Searchlight Pictures drops Empire of Light into cinemas across the United States.