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Raised by a mentally ill mother, Briton Sam Mendes, director of “1917” and the James Bond films “Skyfall” and “Spectre”, very early on considered cinema as a second family, to which he pays homage in his latest movie.
“Empire of Light” tells the tormented story of a mentally unhealthy cinema employee (Olivia Colman) in an English seaside town.
Her only points of reference are the employees of the place, somewhat ghostly, until the arrival of a new recruit, a young black man (Michael Ward), with whom she will fall madly in love.
“I did not grow up in a functional family”explains the 57-year-old director in an interview with AFP. “Theater, cinema and sport were like my families during my youth”.
In “Empire of Light”, “Cinema acts as a crossroads for people of different generations who, in a way, would never see each other otherwise. That’s what I like. It’s completely my personal experience”he continues.
Trained in the theater, to which he always returns after his filming, Sam Mendes made a name for himself with “American Beauty” in 1999, which won the Oscar for best director.
After his two 007s, he definitely stands out as a director who counts with “1917”, a virtuoso fresco in a sequence shot on the First World War.
“Empire of Light” takes a much more intimate turn, under the shy sun of the British coast, in the 1970s, and also evokes the latent racism of this society.
When “everything falls apart”
“Making a film is not always the result of a well-considered decision. Sometimes you feel obliged to tell a specific story”he points out.
And for Sam Mendes, it was time to address the defining issues of his youth.
“I had a good mother, full of energy and life. But she had this disease. She became manic”, he explains.
“She couldn’t fall asleep, she started practically hallucinating. They took her to the hospital, they gave her medicine. And when she came back, she had put on weight, she had lost self-esteem. And it started again”he says.
Son of divorced parents, Mendes spent his childhood between his mother and his father. “I started to understand that she was sick, that it was a cycle, when I reached adolescence. But when you are a child, everything collapses” in every crisis, he admits.
These experiences “made me an observant, reserved and caring person”, he adds.
Sam Mendes started making his first works, writing screenplays, when he was a student. “Running a film crew or a theater company has something to do with taking care of someone who has problems,” he quips.
“It’s about observing and controlling. You’re building an alternate universe that, unlike your life, you can control”he explains.
“When I started, I spoke a lot, even before an actor started doing anything”, he remembers. Over the years, the director has learned that there is “different ways of addressing each person”.
“I like actors who don’t talk a lot. I think I prefer actors who are intuitive but, at the same time, not afraid of failure. Who don’t think too much about themselves, about their picture”.
For “Empire of Light”, nominated for the Oscar for best cinematography, Sam Mendes chose Olivia Colman, the multi-award winning (including an Oscar) British actress, known for her role as Queen Elizabeth II in the television series “The Crown”.
“She’s like a Ferrari in the body of a mini”he said with a smile.