2014 has been a year awash in Biblical epic films and British biopics. Filmmakers this year seemed ever so determined to remind us about famous male, British, historical figures. From Steven Hawking (Theory of Everything) to Alan Turing (The Imitation Game) and finally to William J. Turner (Mr. Turner) everywhere you turned this year audiences were treated to a refresher course in British excellence. Perhaps the finest portrait among these films to emerge is Mike Leigh's ''Mr. Turner''. The revered British director has turned his focus to highlight one of Britain's most important painters of the 19th century, JMW Turner. The film introduces Turner already in height of his career as an established painter and member of the Royal British Academy. Interpreted by Timothy Spall (Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Part I and II), J.M.W. Turner is introduced largely as a middle-class, insensitive, grunting, snorting brute. Living at his residence in London with his father William, played by Paul Jesson, Turner worked in his studio and showcased his work to benefactors primarily all within his home. The central premise of the film spends time detailing the larger events in the quarter-end of Turner's life notably his love affair with Sophia Booth played by Marion Baily, a middle-class, uneducated landlady. Speaking at a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival, Mike Leigh, addressed that the film is not intended to be an autobiographical depiction of Turner. The film does not attempt to instruct the viewer on how Turner designed his compositions but rather focuses heavily on the influences of his canvases. Noticeably Turner weighed on his travels, as depicted in the opening sequence visiting Holland, and later in the seaside village of Margate in county Kent. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the film focuses subtlety on the wrestle Turner had with maintaining an old method of portrait and landscape painting with locomotive steam engines and naval gunboats competing as choices for subject matter. Towards the end of his life, his deteriorating health and heightened critique by the young Queen Victoria seems to have contributed to the more aggressive brush strokes and abstract paintings that garnered Turner his radical reputation. Timothy Spall's Turner, offers a portrait of a withdrawn, antisocial painter internally affected by the criticism of his works and unable to express his true emotions. Behind the snorts, grunts and rumblings, that is Turner's chosen style of communication, lays a man with a sensible heart that Spall captures with precision. Director of photography, Dick Pope, creates a tightly knitted canvas of images that are beautifully attuned to the visuals of Turner. Incredibly knowledgeable about Mr. Turner's palate, Mr. Pope chose lighting and landscapes that would suggest each frame of the film could have been paused and produced by Turner himself. The film never builds to an action crescendo, which may dissatisfy some audience viewers, however the film achieves great heights in examining the life of an artistic prodigy. Those who will find the fruits of Mike Leigh's film most satisfying will be those most patient to quietly absorb the narrative.
Review of Mr. Turner
Mr. Turner
(2014)
If for nothing else, worth the watch for the cinematography & Timothy Spall's performance
21 December 2014