Timothy Spall in “Mr. Turner”
“MR. TURNER” My rating: B+
150 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Though Mike Leigh’s “Mr. Turner” centers on the great English painter J.M.W. Turner, it isn’t really a conventional biography of an artist.
Nor does it offer much insight into the process of painting. Only rarely do we see Turner — brilliantly portrayed by Timothy Spall — with a brush in his hand.
And there’s no plot to speak of…not all that unusual when you consider that Leigh makes his movies after months of collaborative improvisation with his players.
Best to think of “Mr. Turner” as a time machine, a vehicle for transporting us to another era and so completely capturing the feel of the place that you’d swear you can smell the oil paint and the sea air.
The film concentrates on the last years in Turner’s life. By this time (from the late 1840s to his death in 1851), Turner has been widely recognized as one of the great artists of the day. He specializes in seascapes, but his style is so radically impressionistic as to border on the abstract. His work alienates many (there’s a scene of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert viewing a Turner canvas and concluding that the artist must be going blind or mad), yet among his fellow artists he is regarded as a genius.
Genius he may be. As a human being, this Turner leaves something to be desired.
Butler's Cinema Scene 