Mr. Turner

I did write originality, but what I meant by that is - reality. The more realistic the movie is - the more dissatisfaction of the viewers it gets. Here are so many people indicating that the movie "is boring", "it's not entertaining"... Isn't that what life is like?...boring, and imagine being like an old man such as Turner portrayed in the movie - it would be rather boring. I thank god there are directors, who make movies without thinking how to entertain the audience. Every story tells you what it needs itself, you don't have to be extra original (the originality is there - if it's real). There is no chance this movie could be entertaining, you know it's not when you're somewhat familiar with Turner's biography and knowing that the movie shows the painter as an old man. I would very much like people to see reason, that movies are not bad if they don't entertain...God, just think about what kind of century we're living in: We are full of clichés, stereotypes, meaningless images and symbols, spirituality, we create imaginary self, then we promote it, we lie more than ever, and we are constantly seeking the entertainment, we don't want to spend our dear lives on something that looks boring, and even it is boring, don't necessarily dislike it, if you don't see a reason - don't necessarily judge it... Don't reject the originality, in fact, please: don't ever reject the originality. That's the reaction Turner was probably getting - lot of people rejected his kind of art...and not just Turner - it happened at each stage of art history, you're just being the same sort of sarcastic people, who reject the unusual, who always need things to be or look their way. People want to see the reviews (I think that is the purpose of the comment section), not who's entertained and who's not. HERE YOU ARE: The movie is: Real/true, beautiful (the scenes, the cinematography. there is a great deal of attempt to show the environment as it was/could have been around Turner, as well as showing the scenes that made his pictures), well thought story, you don't feel the script (that's a good thing actually, takes a lot of effort to make an audience feel like they are observing a real person's life, following him, attending the same places), acting is brilliant (needless to say - Timothy Spall is a genius). I saw the movie today and it was really worth spading 150 minutes of my life.

My advise to you - who want to watch Mr.Turner is this: Be an accepting person - you will get more out of anything you see that way. Be bored and uninterested - the only times you'll find something new is by not looking for what you'd normally look for (if it's normally an entertainment). And of course: You decide for yourself - what's boring and what's-not.

P.S: It was wise of Mike Leigh to chose the 2.40:1 (I think) aspect ratio particularly for this move, It's the firs Mike Leigh film I saw, to have that aspect ratio (looked really appropriate).

We regularly attend Roger Ebert's Film Festival and before Mr Ebert's death, Timothy Spall was one of the event's special guests. He was there for a showing of Hamlet, I think, and I remember that he was charming and more fun to listen to than I expected. I hadn't really thought of him as a particularly impressive actor but, once again, Roger was right to single him out.

His talents are in full display here enriched by one of the most meticulous productions I've ever seen. The supporting cast is as flawless as any lead could ever ask for, as if everyone could see how unusually good the movie was to become. I particularly enjoyed every move and word that came out of his housekeeper, Hannah, unforgettably played by Dorothy Atkinson.

The subject of the movie, the last part of the life of the English artist J M W Turner, is not the stuff of great drama. The man was an eccentric in his later years, and not a particularly pleasant man. But what sustains the movie is the brilliant insight into 19th century English life. Every one of those characters in English novels who never really quite felt true to life is made undeniably real here. And the thing is, it's being done by Englishmen who are not shying away from full disclosure.

The thing is I usually wait for the DVD with English movies so that I can use the captions, but our local art theater was so beckoning and as it turns out, I needn't have worried. Often the dialog was impossible to make out, but somehow it didn't matter at all. It's not that kind of movie. It's long, but not slow, and I at least enjoyed every minute of it. The opportunity to be enthralled by such talented people is no everyday thing.

The outstanding merit of this film is its realism. One may question what the point is of exposing and anatomizing the worst sides of icons, they would most certainly have strongly minded it themselves, especially Mr. Turner here, who isn't spared for a moment, allowed freely to grunt and growl his distasteful ways all through the entire film, almost as if the point was to make him out as grotesque as possible; but the success and great interest of the film is its way of catching that age and times - it is perfectly convincing all the way. It is also true to Turner as a painter personality, showing his later life very appropriately as paintings like taken directly from his humdrum squalidness of a private life of a rather repulsive and pathetic nature, no matter how rich and successful he was. This character of a series of paintings of a painter's life makes a conventional story unnecessary - the realism and picturesqueness of this fascinating Dickensian world made so true and convincing compensates the lack of further deserts. The highlight is the great exhibition scene in the middle of the film with all the artists and critics together minutely studying each other's works with comments and gossip - admirably like taken directly out of that reality. The quality of Mr. Turner's actual paintings are quite enough to further make this art film completely satisfactory as a good enough accomplishment of its ambitions.

We always knew that "Mr Turner" would not be a conventional costume picture any more than it would be a conventional biopic. It is, after all, a Mike Leigh film and Mr Leigh doesn't do 'conventional'. Of course, he normally concerns himself with the vagaries of contemporary middle-class culture, poking fun at, and then finding the bleeding heart of, the little people who inhabit his very personal world. (Leigh is, perhaps, the only writer/director who can crack us up and break our hearts simultaneously).

"Mr Turner" isn't the first time he has looked to the past nor to real historical figures for his material. With "Topsy-Turvy" he created the world of Gilbert and Sullivan and 'The Mikado'. As musical biopics go it is, perhaps, unique. Now with "Mr Turner" he takes us deep into the life of William Turner, arguably the first great 'modern' painter and almost certainly the greatest of all English painters, and in doing so has created the least stuffy costume picture I have ever seen. Of the several masterpieces Leigh has given us "Mr Turner" may be the finest.

It begins when Turner was already in middle-age and established as England's premier painter and it follows him until his death. It reveals him to be a man of many contradictions, sharing his later life mainly with two women, (he had long since disregarded his shrewish wife and grown-up daughters whose very existence he always denied). For sexual favours he turned to his housekeeper Hannah Danby while preferring the company of the widow Mrs Booth with whom he lodged part of the year in Margate, (Danby never knew of Booth's existence until just before Turner's death). He could be both cruel and kind in equal measure, both to his contemporaries and to those he professed to care about and he certainly had a temper.

We don't learn a great deal about his technique as a painter though we do see him, briefly, at work, including a wonderful scene, one of several great set-pieces, where he adds a daub of paint to one of his canvases at the Royal Academy's Exhibition. It's not really that kind of film. Leigh is more interested in observing the man and getting inside his skull and in this he is greatly helped by Timothy Spall's magnificent performance as Turner, capturing the man mostly in a series of grunts. Spall's Turner doesn't go for deep, philosophical conversations on the nature of art. He seems happiest making small-talk with Mrs Booth and when, in another of the film's great set-pieces, the conversation veers into the critical appraisal of a fellow artist he is quick to debunk the pretentious John Ruskin who obviously likes the sound of his own lisping voice.

Spall, of course, is just the lynch-pin of a terrific ensemble. No-one puts a foot wrong, (including Leigh regulars Ruth Sheen and Lesley Manville), but one must really single out Dorothy Atkinson as the unfortunate and much maligned Danby and Marion Bailey as Mrs Booth. Both women are superb, giving us characters that are much more than mere historical sketches. There is something deeply moving in their silent acceptance of Turner's foibles, (and while Leigh's dialogue is splendidly 'of the period', it's often in the silences that the film is most effective). Credit, too, to Dick Pope's superb cinematography which captures perfectly the paintings without seeming in any way slavish. Indeed, of all films made about artists this may be the finest. I don't doubt for a moment that it's a masterpiece.

Although previous movies about artists haven't set the bar very high, 'Mr Turner' is one of the most authentic films about an individual following this occupation. Director Mike Leigh makes no attempt to string together a conventional biography of Britain's greatest landscape painter - his fragmented account simply observes a variety of the artist's interactions with his beloved father, wealthy patrons, colleagues, critics and mistresses during his later years.

JMW Turner was born and raised the son of a London barber, and although he became the house-guest of aristocrats, he never adopted the persona of a cosmopolitan sophisticate. The film follows his restless workaholic progress from studio to exhibition opening, from brothel to stately home, and on to rented rooms in cheap lodging houses bordering the subject matter which he loved to paint. The painter's early work was relatively conventional as he mimicked the styles of some illustrious predecessors. During the latter part of his life - financially secure and with his reputation established - he embarked on a series of ambitious paintings which anticipated the styles of artists who arrived on the scene several decades afterward. Turner's coarse manners and social awkwardness were infamous, but they are probably exaggerated for dramatic effect in this portrayal. However that's a minor gripe - at the center of the film is Timothy Spall's fine portrayal of an eccentric virtuoso going about the business of being an artist.