Mr. Turner (2014)

Exactly what the scriptwriters and director thought they were producing is beyond me. As others have so rightly said this is a series of disjointed scenes, many that have no end or point. The Cinematography is superb and the acting is of a high standard but all of this is wasted on this pointless film. You learn little if anything about Turner. He comes across as an odd man possessed by one type of painting who is also a bit of a pervert. His relationship with his maid and one scene with a prostitute show him to be very odd indeed. But that is all we ever learn about the man. There is no story and although I watched this to the end, in the vain hope something would start to make sense, which it didn't, I was left wondering why this got so much critical acclaim. I can only assume that critics are not like the rest of us and like to see things that are not there to make themselves seem better than the rest of us.

MR. TURNER is Mike Leigh's biopic of the famous Victorian painter, with Timothy Spall in the title role. It's a lengthy and slightly disappointing movie, mainly because it's quite good but not excellent, as I'd heard. People make out this film to be some kind of masterpiece, and while it does feel authentic and interesting, it fails to grip like other biopics. It's overlong and meandering in places, and as a director Leigh is interested in minute detail rather than the bigger picture.Put it like this: I watched the James Mason film THE DESERT FOX the day before, and as a biopic of the Nazi commander Rommel that was head and shoulders above this film. It had heart, soul, and drama, and MR. TURNER struggles with all of those. What this film does have is plenty of authenticity, bringing the 19th century to colourful and vivid life, and a surprising amount of humour that works. Spall is fine in the title role, but you get the impression that this Turner is a caricature rather than a fully-fledged and fully-rounded fellow. He has no character development and remains simply a classic British eccentric. Compare this to something like CREATION, which really attempted to get into the nitty gritty of Darwin's life and what made him tick, and MR. TURNER suffers by comparison.

I saw the poster and DVD cover for this British film numerous times, I knew obviously it was about a painter, I've always liked the leading actor, and it was rated highly by critics, so I hoped for something really good, directed by Mike Leigh (Abigail's Party, Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake, Another Year). Basically this film looks at the last quarter century in the life of the great eccentric British painter Joseph Mallord William Turner (Timothy Spall). JMW Turner was affected by the death of his esteemed father William Snr. (Paul Jesson), he is loved by his housekeeper Hannah Danby (Dorothy Atkinson), who he takes for granted and occasionally uses for sex, and he forms a close friendship and loving relationship with seaside landlady Sophia Booth (Marion Bailey), with whom he eventually lives incognito in Chelsea, where he died. Throughout his life Turner was a controversial artist, travelling across the country painting many great Romanticist landscapes, some paintings also had negative reaction, he stayed with the country aristocracy, visited a brothel, became a popular if anarchic member of the Royal Academy of Arts, had himself strapped to the mast of a ship so that he could paint a snowstorm, and he was both celebrated and reviled by the public and by royalty. Also starring Karl Johnson as Mr Booth, Another Year's Ruth Sheen as Sarah Danby, Sandy Foster as Evelina, Amy Dawson as Georgiana, Secrets & Lies' Lesley Manville as Mary Somerville, Martin Savage as Benjamin Robert Haydon, Richard Bremmer as George Jones, Niall Buggy as John Carew, A Knight's Tale's Roger Ashton- Griffiths as Henry William Pickersgill, Joshua McGuire as John Ruskin, Robert Portal as Sir Charles Eastlake, Clive Francis as Sir Martin Archer Shee, Simon Chandler as Sir Augustus Wall Callcott, The Vicar of Dibley's James Fleet as John Constable, Fenella Woolgar as Lady Eastlake, Peter Wight as Joseph Gillott, Happy Valley's James Norton as Clarinettist and 'Allo 'Allo's Sam Kelly as Theatre Actor. Turner may have been controversial in his time, but he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting, he is renowned for his oil paintings, but also did great watercolour paintings, his most famous painting is "The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up", which appeared in the gallery scene of Skyfall, and will appear, with Turner (beating British greats like Sir Charlie Chaplin, Sir Alfred Hitchcock and Beatrix Potter), on the £20 note by the year 2020. Spall gives a wonderfully odd performance as the majestic painter, the supporting cast all do their parts fine as well, this is not a conventional biopic as such, it is deliberately fragmented and sketchy, I admit I found it a little long, and slow in places, but overall it was an interesting biographical drama film. It was nominated the Oscars for Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Music for Gary Yershon and Best Production Design, and it was nominated the BAFTAs for Best Cinematography, Best Make Up & Hair, Best Costume Design and Best Production Design. Good, in my opinion!

Another reviewer of this title claims that the problem with this film is that there is no plot. I don't agree. Do our lives have plots? Do the lives of famous people and artists have plots? Did Glen Miller really spend the majority of his life seeking a sound? I may be wrong but it seems to me that what Mike Leigh has done here is exactly what the complainer says he has, namely assembled a series of realistic scenes from Turner's life and let the audience decide what is the plot, if there is indeed one. My thoughts were immediately what is this film saying about the motivation of an uncouth man to create paintings constantly? Did he sense in the late 18th century and early 19th century that art wasn't just a case of seeking the approbation of his contemporaries? He clearly had an eye on his contemporaries, with the story of the red spot on his painting that referred to Constable's work hung next to his. His charity towards Hayden. He clearly enjoyed the camaraderie of his fellow academicians but what did he really think about their work? Then there was his attitude to women. His ex partner, who bore him two sons, his housekeeper who he used without any care, the attitude to the young prostitute and finally his obvious affection for Mrs Booth. All told as a film it was never going to be a modern thriller, but was it as cerebral as it would like to be? Yes I think it was. I'd be interested to see if others saw different narratives in this wonderfully shot and marvellously researched film?