Mr. Turner

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.

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.

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).

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.

Mike Leigh is perhaps best-known for his serio-comic social-realist dramas about contemporary British life, films like "Abigail's Party" and "Life Is Sweet", but he also seems to be developing a sideline in biographies of nineteenth-century cultural figures. First there was "Topsy-Turvy" about Gilbert and Sullivan, and now we have "Mr. Turner" about the life and career of the artist J. M. W. Turner. Or rather about the latter part of his life and career; when we first meet him he is already middle-aged.

Leigh has described Turner as "a great artist: a radical, revolutionary painter," and this is undoubtedly true; Turner's work, especially his later work, seems to prefigure Impressionism, perhaps at times even abstract Modernism. We must not, however, allow our appreciation of the progressive side of Turner's work to degenerate into that lazy cliché about the great artist starving in a garret, scorned or neglected by his contemporaries but later discovered by a grateful posterity. (Very few great artists, except perhaps Van Gogh, have ever conformed to this stereotype). He was greatly admired by his contemporaries, was praised in the highest terms by many critics, especially Ruskin, became a full Royal Academician while still in his twenties, never lacked for patrons and died a wealthy man. By contrast his great contemporary and rival, John Constable, whose art seems much less radical to our eyes, had a much harder struggle to establish himself.

Leigh's purpose in making the film was to "examine the tension between this very mortal, flawed individual, and the epic work, the spiritual way he had of distilling the world." This tension is something very obvious in the film. Turner, especially in later life, was noted for his eccentricity. Unlike many working-class Georgians and Victorians who rose in the world, he never attempted to hide his humble origins. He was untidy, had no social graces and could be rude and tactless. He never married but had a number of mistresses. He was estranged from the first of these, Sarah Danby, and refused to acknowledge his two illegitimate daughters by her. (Sarah appears in the film as do two other mistresses, Hannah Danby Sarah's niece and Turner's housekeeper and Sophia Booth, a seaside landlady).

And yet this uncouth, boorish-seeming man was an artist not only of genius but also of a deep spirituality. His obsession with accurately recording light and atmospheric conditions- he once had himself strapped to the mast of a ship so that he could paint a snowstorm- was born not only of a concern with fidelity to nature but also of a belief that light was a visible manifestation of the Divine. (His last words are said to have been "The sun is God").

How, then, could any actor hope to play so contradictory an individual? The answer to this question comes from Timothy Spall, one of Leigh's favourite actors. Spall is someone I have normally thought of as a "character actor", but here he gets the chance to prove himself as a leading man and makes the most of it. His Turner is a grumpy old man, and in his dealings with women something of a dirty old man as well, forever grunting and spitting and forever speaking in a sort of Cockney whine, and yet we are never allowed to forget that underneath his unpromising exterior he is a sublime artist. This is probably the finest performance I have seen Spall give; it won him "Best Actor" at the Cannes Film Festival and I hope that the Academy will bear him in mind when it comes to next year's Oscars. There is insufficient space to single out all the deserving supporting performances, although I should mention Martin Savage as Turner's friend and fellow-painter Benjamin Haydon, forever trying to borrow money off him, Paul Jesson as Turner's father, to whom he was very close, and Joshua McGuire in a comic turn as an effeminate, lisping Ruskin, very different to the way Greg Wise portrayed him in the recent "Effie Gray".

The other outstanding feature of the film is its visual beauty. Leigh and his cinematographer Dick Pope were clearly aiming to make it one of those films where every shot looks like a painting in its own right, and certainly succeed in this ambition. Some cinematic biographies of great artists, such as "Girl with a Pearl Earring" about Vermeer, do succeed in capturing the distinctive "look" of their subject, but I think that Leigh and Pope were not actually aiming to make every shot look like a Turner; their palette of colours, for example, is rather too muted for that. Possibly they felt that the peculiar luminosity of Turner's work would be too difficult to reproduce on film. There are, however, some memorable shots, such as the opening scene by the river in Holland, complete with windmill, and the one where Turner watches "the fighting Temeraire" being towed up the Thames, thereby getting the inspiration for one of his best-known works.

I am not sure if "Mr Turner" quite justifies the label "masterpiece" which some have tried to pin on it; it can at times be too slow-moving for that. Spall's wonderful acting, however, and Pope's striking cinematography make it a film that stands out from the crowd. 8/10