Turner

Immediately I noticed this film advertised as being directed by Mike Leigh, I checked the cast list of "Mr Turner" (Mr T) and noticed some familiar names he cast from the 1999 film "Topsy Turvey" (TT) - a biopic about Gilbert & Sullivan and specifically about how "The Mikado" was created by the famous lyricist and composer.So in "Mr Turner" we had Timothy Spall in the title role while in TT he played Richard Temple.The physical makeup appearance of Dorothy Atkinson as Hannah Danby was very different after 15 years having played Jessie Bond in TT.Martin Savage who played George Grossmith in TT played Benjamin Robert Haydon in Mr T.Finally Lesley Manville - Lucy Gilbert in TT surprisingly played a scientist Mary Somerville in Mr T.This appears to be a coterie of some of Mike Leigh's favourite actors.Other directors like Mel Brooks similarly cast favourite actors in their films.

I learnt that Timothy Spall took two years in developing his characterisation of Joseph Mallord William Turner and that a real artist was engaged in giving him lessons in Turner's art technique.Being an amateur artist myself I would have liked to see more shots of him painting though rather than grunting.There is always a dichotomy between the arts when a biopic is produced in how much screen time you give to the central character's discipline and how much to acting out their life.In this case the producer has to cater for cinema goers who do not know about Turner and his art.Other Victorian notables who appeared in "Mr Turner" were Queen Victoria & Prince Albert, The art critic John Ruskin & John Constable (James Fleet).I also noticed a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti who often used Elizabeth Siddall as his model, since the pre-Raphaelite movement was beginning towards the end of Turner's life.References to Railways, The Great Exhibition of 1851 added a topical scientific & dramatic flavour.Most of Turner's most popular paintings were on display, most notably "The Fighting Temeraire", "Steam Fire & Air" and "Slave Ship Throwing Slaves (in a storm into the waves)".

I attended with my wife in one of the first viewings of "Mr Turner" when it went on general release on 1/11/14.I enjoyed TT a little more since this film of Mike Leigh had the additional joy of hearing G&S and I therefore gave Mr T 7/10 and TT 8/10.

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.

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.

I hated it... I sighed and tutted and moved around in my seat... and then about a third of the way through it won me over. In that respect (and in many others respect) it's actually a lot like a Turner.

The initial scenes of the movie, which are very irritating to sit through, set the rest up well, lots of loud stomping on wooden floorboards, dry interiors in Turneresque palettes Timothy Spall making more grunting noises than any actor should be able to and still be taken seriously... stomp stomp stomp bang bang bang, hoarse shouting instead of dialogue, character introductions so perfunctory and stark they're almost parodic of the cinematic vernacular. The movie just screams with the kind of self-absorbed worthiness and obsession with human frailty that gives 'art films' a bad name... The wife shows up and harangues Turner at a volume that would transcend satire... there's an extended sequence during which a contemporaneous artist's career is commented on, vociferously and cruelly, by a group of critics/artists/patrons as he stomps off over the fields, this scene plays nothing like a conversation, but rather as if the script writer had typed out a series of quotes from a biography...Turner molests his housekeeper in the gruntiest, unsexiest way possible but it's SO clumsy and awkward the scene burns itself out and it just looks totally lifeless...actors expending effort poorly...

But the movie carries on like this with such gusto and wholeheartedness that it eventually became quite difficult (for me, at any rate) to remain cynical and detached. I did find myself immersed in the life of the man.

Timothy Spall's performance is completely over the top, and actually rather unpleasant to experience. Grunt, bash, bang, smash, grunt, growl, stomp, bash, grunt... it's almost a cartoon. You certainly can't come away from this movie liking the man you've just watched. He's an extremely annoying man. But as the movie progresses new flavours enter the character and it becomes clear that this movie isn't really a story at all, it really is primarily a portrait (rather as Turner's landscapes often seem more like portraits... so moody and full of consequence and meaning). Should I be disappointed at that? Perhaps I should, but I wasn't. Judging the movie on how it achieves it's intentions I should probably give it a 10... (Only I think it went on too long).

The scene that made me realise that the film-maker was fully aware of how I felt about this man I was watching came near the end when Turner's popularity is waning and he attends the Academy exhibition to be confronted with the Pre-Raphaelites. He starts sniggering. Nowhere in the movie is any attempt to explain his art or his theory of his art or the theory of any of the art contemporaneous with his and yet the scene makes perfect sense.

Very nicely done.

It is like his art. I don't like Turner, but I can't really *dismiss* Turner as I might someone more widely "respected" like Mondrian or Lichtenstien... or...(eyeroll)...Rothko.

There's a scene with an elephant. Mike Leigh spends some time on getting this scene right. I think it might mean something... Such a long time it's been since a movie made me actually *ponder* on whether or not I liked it... That's got to be worth something.

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.