Mr. Turner

Year: 2014
Genre: Drama
Directed: Mike Leigh
Stars: Timothy Spall, Paul Jesson, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey, Karl Johnson, Ruth Sheen, Sandy Foster, Amy Dawson, Lesley Manville, Richard Bremmer, Martin Savage, Fred Pearson
Production: Focus Features

Mike Leigh is arguably one of Britain's foremost humanist filmmakers to come out of the last quarter century. In a career percolating since the seventies, Leigh has done everything from fanciful period dramas to low-key domestic dramedy; all the while focusing mightily on the subtle character arcs that we're meant to see ourselves in. Sometimes it works, other times his serenity through the mundane can seem tedious. Unfortunately tedious is exactly how I would describe Mr. Turner.

Mr. Turner concerns the last years of J.M.W. Turner (Spall) an English  Romanticist painter whose life was filled with controversy and whose gallery was always full of momentous landscapes. He never married although he refused paternity to his two daughters birthed by Sarah Danby (Sheen). He carries on affairs with, among others, Hannah (Atkinson) his housekeeper and a landlady named Sophia Booh (Bailey). Despite his lechery, Turner was known as a "painter of light" and his techniques were shadowed and improved upon by a burgeoning group of European painters known as the Impressionists.

Within the plot there is a lot to consider about Turner the man. He carries himself like a beast of burden yet he's readily accepted by the high society including the Royal Academy of Arts where he teaches. He's a lout to his mistress, yet he openly entertains and mentors childhood friend Mary Somerville (Manville) who broke British social norms by studying the sciences. He's dismissive of his daughters and their mother yet he honors and respects his father (Jesson). He was antagonistic to his colleagues yet fond of his friends.

What we have in Mr. Turner is an exploration of humanity through a film that at once seems to be inspired by some of Turner's paintings. Through its singular protagonist it ambles around the frames of Turner's life, discovering every wort, every wrinkle, every discolored hair follicle; trying incredibly hard to prod meaning from the old curmudgeon.

Yet while Leigh's mis en scene is inspirational and gorgeous, and while his themes are surmountable; I am sorry to say that Mr. Turner suffers mightily under the pressure of it's own stodginess. The film's textures can't help but feel bereft from life; it's filigree listless under the pageantry that defines Victorian era films. There is a reason why Turner's late work is viewed by art historians as proto-impressionistic; the feelings evoked from his "Helvoetsluys, Ships Going Out to Sea" are anarchistic, "Burning of the Houses of Parliament" antagonistic; yet with Mr. Turner we get the sense that the filmmaker and the subject are looking past each other. Perhaps instead of meticulously mimicking Turner's visuals, Leigh and cinematographer Dick Pope could have done well to meticulously mimic his ardor and passion.

That said the film is very beautiful. Its depictions of sweeping vistas and sea drenched coastal villages lends the movie to be a little more than just your average costume drama like The Danish Girl (2015). Timothy Spall to his credit mimics Charles Laughton's Rembrandt (1932) only with the timber of a soggy old sea goat. Still even at his most crass, Spall's Turner still shines as an example of a character fully realized and sympathetic.

There are worse ways to spend two and a half hours though there are certainly better ones as well. Mr. Turner is a gorgeous film that unfortunately rings hallow. No one is to blame for it. Mike Leigh is still a master of humanism and Timothy Spall still one of the most underrated character actors to ever exist. J.M.W. Turner is still a master of landscapes and his place in history is still undisputed. The globe rotates, the seas ebb and the world will undoubtedly forget Mr. Turner.

Final Grade: D+