Sam Mendes assembled most of the ingredients necessary to make Empire of Light a wrenching English melodrama with a potent social theme. The stars are Olivia Colman, Colin Firth, Micheal Ward, and Toby Jones. Mendes teamed with his usual cinematographer Roger Deakins, whose elegant panoramic images lend a grandeur to Margate’s faded glory. The town’s art deco Dreamland Cinema provided the main location of a movie admirably modest in scale.