Reviews

Mr Turner starring Timothy Spall film review in Bristol

Posted on: 2014-11-03

It's such a richly textured, exquisitely moving 19th century costume drama, that if it doesn't bag the majority of gongs come awards time, I'll eat my easel.

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Mike Leigh's Mr Turner portrays the artist John Mallord William Turner as a bumbling, irascible Dickensian figure, somewhat insecure of his own talent - and it's such a richly textured, exquisitely moving 19th century costume drama, that if it doesn't bag the majority of gongs come awards time, I'll eat my easel. 

Timothy Spall is asbolutely superb as land and seascape artist, delivering a masterclass in character study, a towering performance of such magnitude and power yet infusing this flawed man with such tenderness and humanity it's impossible not to warm to him. 

He's cantankerous, coarse, curmudgeonly, repulsed by prevailing trends, publicly divisive, and constantly at loggerheads with the artistic establishment. An outsider and maverick, he punctuates conversations with grunts and groans of disapproval, humphing and gallumphing his way around his London home and seaside towns like a belligerent Mr Toad. His work is his life and consumes him, at the cost of loved ones and occasionally sanity, and eventually health. A man perpetually driven by his passion, expectorating wads of spit onto the canvas in an almost demonically-possessed rage pf artistic frenzy. 

Spall spent two years learning to paint so he could depict Turner's brush strokes convincingly, and the result is a mesmerising, amusing, poignant portrayal of a misunderstood, complex man.  Spall just simply IS Turner. 

He’s also a dizzying mass of contradictions. He absolutely loathes his mistress and his daughters, but shares a touching, close relationship with his father (Paul Jesson). He's oblivious to the affections of his housekeeper (Dorothy Atkinson), other than a quick bunk-up, leaving her forever agonised and yearning. He's at once part of the artistic elite and yet so much a misfit apart from it. 

The plot unfolds leisurely, following a life that's the consequence of peripatetic sojourns and encounters. Leigh uses Dick Pope's cinematography to stunning effect, transitioning Turner's artistic palette from canvas to film with some gorgeously sumptuous shots and striking use of light and colour.  

A particular stand-out scene sees Turner visiting the Royal Academy and making small talk with a series of artists and their works-in-progress: insightful, funny, dizzying, and representative of the intense rivalry between the artists of the day, encapsulated with the briefest of surname-exchanges between the period's primary pioneers and rivals, Turner and Constable.  

But despite Turner's imperfections, ululations and seeming vulgarity, the heart of the film lies in the man's very humanity, his need to be loved, his repression of basic emotions yet burning need to adequately express them. His true goodness and moments of affection shine through in his relationship with a widowed Margate landlady (Marion Bailey). 

There are touching acknowledgments of times moving on, the inevitable shifting sands of time  and the inescapable questions of fate and legacy. The moving passing of Turner's father represents a new artistic release, unleashing a fresh zeal but an agonizing encounter with a prostitute as he tries to suppress, unsuccessfully, his sense of anguished grieving. And as Turner succumbs to have his photograph taken with the newly-invented camera, the photographer's shout of "Finished" are countered by Turner's rapier-sharp, droll retort, "Yes, my thoughts exactly."

Of course, it's tempting to draw parallels between the life of Turner and director Leigh, particularly in respect of the fact both of them represent a certain ideal of Englishness in their professions, and even more so in that Leigh - himself advancing in years - chooses to focus on the last 25 years of Turner's life. 

Turner is a film that's at once incredibly epic yet intimately small, exploiting character traits and situations that have all played roles in previous Leigh movies and amounting here to a touchingly personal summation of the artist's twilight years.  

"So I am to become a non-entity," Turner allegedly said on his death bed. In life and in film, far from it. For all his gruffness and eccentricities, he was an overwhelmingly ordinary man responsible for some of the most extraordinary art.

Leigh's Mr Turner is as much as masterpiece as any of the artist's creations. 

5/5

Reviewed by Jamie Caddick for 365Bristol

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