(UK, 150 min.)
Written and directed by Mike Leigh
Starring: Timothy Spall, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey,
Paul Jesson, Lesley Manville, Ruth Sheen.
“The sun is God,” proclaims artist JMW Turner (Timothy
Spall) with his dying breath in Mr. Turner. Mr. Turner, the biography of the
great British painter from great British filmmaker Mike Leigh (Another Year),
is an exquisitely unflattering portrait of a man who was capable of both poetic
beauty and harsh cruelty. The man’s a mass of contradictions with his evocative
ability to create capture landscapes and ships with awe-inspiring splendour
whereas his view of humans is unbearably bleak. Leigh’s Mr. Turner epitomizes
the world of warts-and-all biographies, and Leigh and Spall’s spectacularly
unattractive portrait of this artist, his world, and his work is a stroke of
greatness.
Mr. Turner simply presents moments in the life of Mr. Turner as he fastidiously throws himself into his work. Turner obsesses himself with capturing light in his paintings, so it’s no wonder that the great orb in the sky defines his transition from one world to the next. Mr. Turner displays some of the artist’s work so wonderfully that the texture and warmth of the sunlight that the artist infuses into his paintings is stirring enough to make even an atheist believe in the heavens. There’s nothing overtly spiritual about Turner’s works (or about the man himself), but Mr. Turner conveys the artist’s ability to create poetic images, elicit emotions, and conjure feelings of wonder and awe through his increasingly expressionistic renderings of the natural world.
Scenes of Turner’s obsessiveness show the full course of the
artistic process. Turner stands in a field and etches on a piece of paper as he
observes light and shadows with the setting of the sun. He dabbles with the
correct colours of paints—expensive rarities from the local artisan—and furiously
mottles his canvases in search of the perfect evocation of the natural shade
and warmth of the sunlight. A huge gob of spit finds its way onto the canvas
here and there—Mr. Turner certainly knows how to hork a loogie—and the mix of
classical craft and barroom artistry uncannily realizes the many fascinating
contradictions of this artistic titan.
Spall, a regular in Leigh’s films (as is pretty much
everyone in Mr. Turner) gives a masterful performance as the grand painter.
Spall’s Turner is a large presence, both in his swelling burliness and in his overall
aura, as he plays the painter as a man of high calling, but one whose feet are
firmly and humbly on the ground. Mr. Turner never once elevates its subject
beyond the world of a mere mortal, for although Turner infects callousness to
the people in his closest circles, he’s subtly considerate of his peers and
weighted by his inability to connect with anything other than his art. The flawed
and ordinary characterization of JWL Turner is most impressive in Spall’s
creation of Turner as grotesquely human personality, like a Dickensian pub-dweller
with a hidden talent. Spall’s Turner communicates largely through his own
language—a series of grunts that sound like rough guttural oinking—and the
dismissive unintelligibility of his bodily noises makes him resemble a
painterly pig more than a divine artiste while conveying his pure disinterest
in most of the other human characters in the film.
The moments of life that Leigh opts to show in Mr. Turner pepper
JMW Turner’s world with peculiar characters that illuminate why Turner has such
a reclusive personality and reveal how a man of such warm artistry can be such
a cold character. His simple housemaid Hannah (impressively underplayed by
Dorothy Atkinson) is his most devoted companion, caring for his work and
running his home thoroughly without voicing any concern for her own poverty and
sense of abandonment. Their odd relationship is defined largely by servitude
and Turner’s sexual exploitation of Hannah—jarring, unexpected moments of
copping a feel or worse—and by the fondness for the notice that goes unobserved
by Turner in these few moments that he aggressively gives Hannah the attention
she desires. The itchy psoriasis that increasingly colours Hannah as the years
go on is one of the remarkable ways that Leigh imperceptibly weaves in elements
of the social conditions that define Turner’s world, but the subtlety of Atkinson’s
performance is especially fine in conveying Turner’s coldness as his most loyal
confidant becomes increasingly swept away from his private life.
Casting aside those whom are most devoted to him is a trait
of Mr. Turner, for Leigh invites Turner’s estranged wife, Sarah (Ruth Sheen),
into the home with Turner’s two daughters and grandson for several visits.
These abrupt visits show the pinnacle of Turner’s cruelty as Sarah can barely
contain her contempt for her husband as he barely feigns interest in her or
their daughters. Turner frequently denies his wife and children to peers and
admirers (to frequently quizzical looks from Hannah), but the final encounter
between Turner and Sarah brings the saddest moment of humanity into Turner’s
home. It’s not that he detests people (okay, maybe Sarah); it’s that a
relationship with paints and canvasses makes one far less vulnerable. Turner
simply doesn’t know how to express himself with humans as well as he does with
a paintbrush.
Turner finally finds solace in the warmth and simplicity of Mrs.
Booth (Marion Bailey), the manager of a hotel by the sea where Turner
frequently visits to observe the light on the water. Bailey is the image of charity
and kindness as Mrs. Booth makes an effort to relate to Mr. Turner (who goes by
the alias of “Mr. Mallard” in her presence, with “Mallard” being the M of JMW),
but the growing affection between them also defines the growing detachment
between Turner and Hannah. The final scenes following Turner’s death, much like
Leigh’s other grand period piece Topsy-Turvy, invite the female characters of
the ensemble to carry the final images of the film, and Mr. Turner offers a
portrait of a man who could snuff out light just as easily as he could conjure
it. The ending is poignant in its ambiguity and leaves the audience feeling an
equal loss for Turner’s contribution to the art world.
The film itself is proof of Turner’s longevity as
cinematographer Dick Pope (now and forever known as “Dick Poop” thanks to a
gaffe by Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs on nomination day) creates each
frame of Mr. Turner as a masterful nod to Turner’s work. The cinematography of Mr.
Turner harnesses the light just as madly and beautifully as Turner does in his
paintings. Any one of Pope’s landscape shots could hang on the wall of a
gallery with their immaculate lensing of natural light. The excellent
craftsmanship of the costumes by Jaqueline Durran (Anna Karenina) and the production
design by Suzie Davis recreate Victorian London with just as rich an eye for
detail.
Leigh strikingly extends the world of Mr. Turner to other
currents in the globe that make the life of JMW just as relevant today as it
was in the era of Queen Victoria. Turner, for one, positions himself well
within the argument that art is meant for the good of the public when he
refuses an intimidating offer of £100 000 for his entire collection. Turner
believes that the art should be bequeathed, gratis, to the people of England
and it should be displayed by all to see rather than holed up in a private
collection or archive. Similarly, Turner confronts the advent of the camera
with equal measures of inquisitiveness and despair, learning about the device
as he gets his portrait done while wondering if this contraption that harnesses
the light marks the end of the era for painters. It’s the same question of
digital versus film, perhaps, that Leigh himself is confronting and accepting
as currents change in the creation and consumption of art, but the world of Mr.
Turner also shows that a master artist is simply irreplaceable regardless of
the innovations that technology brings. Hmmph, indeed, Mr. Turner.
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Mr. Turner is currently screening in limited release.
And don’t forget to
take in some of Mr. Turner’s paintings at the National Gallery of Canada!
