Empire of Light

An unexpected treat this morning: WhiskyFoxtrot and Tim came to Oxford and we caught up over coffee in East Oxford then a walk into University-land. It was lovely to see them again.

This afternoon I went to see Sam Mendes/Roger Deakins's Empire of Light. Oh my goodness I tumbled head-first into the glorious cinematography: the lights, the silhouettes, the chiaroscuro, the use of mirrors to have some of the frame in focus and some not, or reflections to suggest things being next to each other when they weren't. I caught my breath repeatedly at the beauty of it. The music was my vintage and done very well too - I was glad to be in a cinema with a decent sound system. It also referenced the riots and the New Cross fire of 1981, when I was teaching unemployed black youngsters enduring sus racism in Brixton. So I was able to ignore the silly, soppy, sentimental (isn't that expression interesting as a primary-school playground jibe?) storyline. My companion, who knows much more about film than I do, was not, and afterwards drew my attention to some of the unlikelihoods and impossibilities that had passed me by and to a metaphor that really riled her. She's absolutely right - the story is as daft as that of Sam Mendes's earlier film, 1917, which I hated.

What I want to do now is watch it all over again with a pause button so I can see lots and lots and lots of those images as stills.

I hadn't realised until I saw the trailer for this film about a fortnight ago that when I was in Margate over Christmas my eye had been drawn to the light shining through the very same cinema. I'm cheating and using that old image for today. (I've deleted it from Alterum's journal.)