Director: Mike Leigh
Cast: Timothy Spall, Dorothy Atkinson, Paul Jesson, Marion Bailey, Ruth Sheen and Lesley Manville
Certificate: 12A
Running Time: 149 minutes
Synopsis: An exploration of the last quarter century of the great, if eccentric, British painter JMW Turner’s life.
There comes a time towards the end of MR. TURNER, Mike Leigh’s period study of the 19th-century painter JMW Turner, where Timothy Spall – in character as the grizzled artist – grunts in response to a question. This isn’t the first time Turner’s reply has amounted to a guttural noise of monosyllabic rudeness, nor is it the last. However, what becomes striking about these grunts is how their overuse assists in blurring the lines between real-life and performance; Spall hasn’t merely become Turner, no. Spall is Turner. Whether he’s laughing with disdain or howling with emotion, the British actor plays Turner as an aloof creature who crawls about his days with an air of unpredictability, doing what he wants and whenever he wants to do it. It’s the closest possible alternative to having Turner himself up there on the screen, and as Leigh’s camera follows Spall around from scene to scene, we are able to glimpse Turner’s languid existence and the effortless genius which followed.
Spall’s all-encompassing performance may provide MR. TURNER with its victory lap come awards season (he won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival earlier on this year), yet that isn’t to say there aren’t a handful of other delights to fathom. Dick Pope – the Academy Award nominated cinematographer behind THE ILLUSIONIST (2006) – strikes gold in his fifth partnership with British filmmaker Mike Leigh; the scintillating scenery, at times breathtaking, dazzles with the picturesque images that so influenced Turner’s work. Leigh’s decision to film in several locations where the artist actually resided and painted achieves an overt sense of realism in the one sense, but the character’s humanisation derives from Leigh’s personal flair. LIFE IS SWEET (1990) may have been set in the home of a working-class North London family while VERA DRAKE’s story occurs in the backstreets of 1950s London – MR. TURNER takes us from London through to West Sussex and Cornwall (doubling beautifully for Margate) but Leigh’s trademark sense of realism prevails.
Spanning the latter 25 years of Turner’s life, Leigh refuses to establish the painter’s social standing or relationship with his mistresses, children or fellow artists (his fraught rivalry with Constable is fantastically surmised by one acknowledgement). Leigh relies on the audience to delve into Turner’s life, rummage around and scramble the pieces together, refusing to belie his enigmatic existence. While at times frustratingly baffling, Leigh has indeed painted a biographical picture which could one day – far in the future – be pontificated upon as Turner’s paintings are today: not to everyone’s liking, but difficult to deny its beauty.
[usr=4] MR TURNER is released in cinemas across the UK from today.
