Things get interesting when Hilary and Stephen succumb to their mutual attraction and begin a semi-secret relationship. They travel to the beach, spend their lunches together, and even nurse a pigeon with a broken wing back to health. But Hilary has a past that the staff of the Empire does not talk about, and many of her fellow employees — most notably Norman and the empathetic Neil (Tom Brooke) — are worried she'll succumb to old habits, especially now that it appears she's stopped taking her medications.

Mendes' overstuffed screenplay doesn't stop there. Ellis is a sexual predator who takes advantage of Hilary's condition. She is battling mental illness, and her blossoming relationship with Stephen leads to unexpected emotional outbursts and semipsychotic delusions. He happens to be a Black man, the son of an immigrant, living in a majority white town whose most abhorrent citizens feel newly empowered in Margaret Thatcher's England to openly display their violent racism.

Got all that? Mendes also throws in the British premiere of Chariots of Fire at the Empire, which culminates in a cringy face-off between Hilary and Ellis that would be unforgivably disgusting if not for Colman and Firth's determined commitment to make the scene work. That they rise above the material during this moment shouldn't come as a surprise (they each have Academy Awards sitting on their mantles at home, and for good reason), but this does not make the scene any less egregious.

Coincidence piles upon coincidence. Hackneyed storytelling contrivances assault the viewer with punishing ferocity. Some of the dialogue is so thunderously pummeling it can feel like Mendes is hammering it home with a jackhammer. A riot sequence right at the start of the third act is staged with all the finesse of a swift kick to the groin followed by a hard slap to the face. It's so ill-conceived one begins to wonder if this is the same Mendes who created such magical poetry with nothing more than a floating plastic bag in American Beauty or generated such a consistent state of gut-wrenching intensity with the faux single-shot WWI thriller 1917.

But it all looks stunning, courtesy of Deakins. With a notable assist from production designer Mark Tildesley (No Time to Die), the Oscar-winning cinematographer does a stupendous job of making the Empire a living, breathing character standing tall inside this soap opera. The visuals have an immersive dexterity that's intoxicating, and when those are coupled with the incredible sound design and augmented by Reznor and Ross' fabulous score, the film becomes a seductively eerie spellbinder in which the plot no longer even matters.

Then there is the ending. Where Mendes leaves things is hardly special, and key elements are reminiscent of Giuseppe Tornatore's classic Cinema Paradiso. But Colman and Jones underplay these last moments with an intimate simplicity that's masterful, and the director stages his climax with a grace strangely absent from the rest of this undeniably personal drama. These scenes sing with a sparkling majesty, the power of the cinematic image rendered with mesmeric, breathtaking beauty.

Is this ending enough to save Empire of Light and make watching it worthwhile? For me it was, but I also didn't have to pay for a ticket to get into the theater. Mendes has made far better films, and I am certain he will do so again. But if the viewer is in the right frame of mind and is willing to overlook several noticeable missteps, there is something magical to be found here. As to whether that magic has any staying power, only the passage of time will answer that question, even if my gut tells me it's sadly unlikely.