Down to Margate

A what last week/deep-dive hybrid

It started with Olivia Colman—and a sizeable misunderstanding.

It ended with all last week’s viewing being unexpectedly interconnected.

And now I’m taking you on a seaside adventure.

We’re off to Margate.

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Now, I feel I need to start with the caveat that I’m a Northern girl who’s never been to Margate (on the south coast of England, for non-UK readers). My prior knowledge of the town consists of the cultural high-low of being famously associated with the English Romantic painter, JMW Turner, and infamously associated with the Trotters and their pals thanks to the 1989 Only Fools and Horses Christmas special, Jolly Boy’s Outing.

With that disclaimer out of the way, make sure you’ve packed your bucket and spade. The coach is leaving right now.

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The starting point for this seaside special was my decision last weekend to rewatch Sam Mendes’ beautiful Oscar-nominated film, Empire of Light (Disney+), which is predominantly set in an art-deco cinema in an unnamed south coast town.

I saw Empire of Light at the cinema back in January with a very good friend of mine. This is where the misunderstanding comes in, because I erroneously sold it to her as ‘a light-hearted film about a group of friends renovating a cinema’. It is not that. Not at all.

As much as we enjoyed what the film turned out to actually be, there was a certain level of surprise, and perhaps even mild discomfort on my part, as the story unfolded very differently than anticipated. So my rewatch was prompted by the urge to be able to fully appreciate the film, free from the taint of mis-seller’s guilt.

What Empire of Light is, is a beautiful exploration of humanness. Of connection. Of the sometimes brief but powerful impact we have on each other’s lives. Olivia Colman is spectacular in the role of Hilary, a woman living a soulless but safe half-life as duty manager of the Empire cinema. It is 1981. She is kind and quiet and methodical, a hard-working part of the team of friendly misfits that run the cinema. Hilary has mental health issues, ‘managed’ with numbing medication, but when Stephen (the brilliant Michael Ward) joins the team, she starts to let herself feel again, lets her life open up once more.

Writing the character of Hilary, Mendes pulled from his personal experience with his mother, and the result is a portrait of a woman dealing with a serious mental health crisis that is rendered with warmth; ultimately she’s supported by a family of friends who love her and see her through the dark times.

Empire of Light is also undoubtedly and beautifully a paean to cinema. As Stephen says to Hilary, surprised that she’s never actually watched one of the films she diligently stewards:

“That little beam of light is an escape.”

Mendes’ love of cinema is there for all to witness, enjoy and share, from the classic ‘80s films reflected in posters and titles on the marquee (added letter by letter by an usher precariously balanced on a ladder, naturally), to the reverence the projectionist (oh how I love Toby Jones) has for his craft, his canisters, his room where the magic happens. In fact, while there are a lot of emotional moments throughout the film, the scene that has tears running down my face sees us watching Hilary watching a film. So simple, but conveying so much about the power of movies to move us.

And more than showcasing the wonder of cinema, the film showcases the wonder of this cinema. The stunning cinematography of the Empire itself is one of the most glorious aspects of the film. And the building’s scale and beauty (though they never do get round to renovating it!) was what had my Googling fingers itching after the film had finished. Where was Empire of Light filmed?

The answer shaped the rest of my viewing week—and the rest of this newsletter.

Retro-style travel poster by White One Sugar

Yes, Empire of Light saw the iconic main building of Margate’s Dreamland amusement park transformed into a cinema once more. A vintage entertainment venue that’s now a thriving part of Margate’s regeneration as a ‘capital of cool’. There’s a great blogpost from the Dreamland website about the different locations featured in the film in the Extra credit section, below.

I’d seen adverts for the new sky original Lily Allen vehicle, but hadn’t particularly felt drawn to watch or looked into it in any great detail until I read this

Pandora Sykes

Books + Bits

newsletter. The series is called Dreamland (NOW/sky atlantic) and it’s set in Margate—be still my interconnection-loving heart! So I watched the whole thing in a couple of nights. Dreamland is a comedy series based on a BAFTA-winning short film that Sharon Horgan wrote for sky in 2017 (see below). Horgan hasn’t written this series, but is an executive producer and it’s made by her production company, Merman. Dreamland tells the story of three sisters and their mum (and brilliant nan) living chaotically in Margate, when the fourth sister (Allen) returns from Paris bringing a whole extra level of chaos with her. This is very much ‘modern Margate’, and it features a highly anticipated family day out at Dreamland. But as Sykes mentions, the writers do address the reality that regeneration also leads to wealthy outsiders (aka Londoners) moving in and pricing the locals out of the housing market. The show is set up around a great twist, and certainly leaves room for another series. It’s easy to watch, colourful and fun.

Obviously I then had to delve into the archives and find the short film Dreamland evolved from. Morgana Robinson’s Summer: Dreamland (NOW/sky arts) is episode 1 of series 5 of the sky arts Comedy Shorts series. At just ten minutes it’s the very essence of the series it has gone on to become, the twist at the heart of the Dreamland storyline that is expanded on and created around. The sisters are all there and their mother. There are cross-over actors. Although a real delight for me was Sheridan Smith in the role Freema Agyeman takes on in Dreamland. She is fantastic—practically bursting with pregnancy and fury. It’s definitely interesting to witness the genesis of a series, and to see how a story can be told so brilliantly with such brevity. Glimpses of Margate are thin on the ground, a very standard kiss-me-quick seafront on display when the sisters walk to an off-licence, but thanks to several beautiful shots from the back of the cinema with sea beyond in Empire of Light, I recognised the slightest edge of the Dreamland building appearing in the opening credits.

Aptly saved until the end, the final stop on my tour of Margate on screen was a rewatch of Last Orders (Channel 4), based on the 1996 Booker-winning novel by Graham Swift (he of Mothering Sunday fame). Here four men travel from the East End of London to the south coast to honour the dying request of their friend, Jack Dodds, to scatter his ashes into the sea at—you guessed it—Margate. It’s a great story, the interrelationships and histories, told through a series of flashbacks, create a picture of a very human group of long-standing friends. It’s both moving and funny, and features a truly spectacular cast of British actors—Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren. And Dreamland makes an appearance, of course. They drive past it along the seafront when they finally reach their destination towards the end of the film (it’s quite the journey to get there). I also loved spotting it in the background of the picture of his wife Amy that Jack takes to war.

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I hope you’ve enjoyed our jolly to Margate—if you’re thinking about extending your stay, you could always read the novel that spawned the film, Graham Swift’s Last Orders. Or travel back in time and enjoy Timothy Spall stalking the seaside town for artistic inspiration in Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner.

And if you’ve got any actual Margate holiday reminiscences, please do share them in the comments!

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Extra credit:

When Googling to doublecheck I’d correctly remembered the wording of the quote I loved from Empire of Light, I discovered it was also the name of a great featurette on the film:

Philip Larkin’s moving poem The Trees is read by Olivia Colman in Empire of Light, so I searched it out in my copy of Larkin’s Collected Poems (it originally appeared in High Windows—as it does in the film), and it’s so beautifully, seasonally appropriate, I thought I share it here.

The Trees

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Here’s a link to a beautiful animation of Larkin reading The Trees, made by Lucy Izzard for BBC Culture to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Larkin’s death: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20151201-a-beautiful-animation-of-philip-larkins-the-trees

Blog post from Dreamland (the place) on the filming of Empire of Light and showcasing the locations featured: https://www.dreamland.co.uk/dreamland-shines-brightly/

Guardian review of Dreamland (the show): https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/apr/06/dreamland-review-lily-allen-sharon-horgan-comedy-drama

Sharon Horgan, Morgana Robinson and team receiving the BAFTA for Short Form Programme for Morgana Robinson’s Summer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjyJXyVdJeY

Art connections abound in Margate, here’s more on JMW Turner and the (fantastic looking) gallery that takes his name: https://www.visitthanet.co.uk/see-and-do/arts-and-culture/turner-and-margate/#:~:text=John%20Ruskin%2C%20a%20leading%20English,house%20between%201827%20and%201847.

And in recent weeks, Tracey Emin has opened an art school in the town. This is a wonderful article about it: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/mar/28/tracey-emin-on-the-joy-of-founding-her-own-art-school-margate

Apologies in advance for the final link. This has been whirling round my head on repeat since I made this week’s connection:

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