Mr Turner
Mike Leigh
The story: During the first half of the 19th century, J.M.W. Turner (Timothy Spall) was a controversial figure in the British painting community. He had a showman’s flair and was well-regarded by his peers but could also be stubborn and gruff. His personal life was messy as he fathered daughters he neglected and he used his housekeeper Hannah (Dorothy Atkinson) to satisfy his sexual needs. He later takes up with the widowed landlady Mrs Booth (Marion Bailey).

Writer-director Mike Leigh made his name with socially conscious realist dramas including Hard Labour (1973), High Hopes (1988) and All Or Nothing (2002), which are known for their depiction of the British working class.
So, the choice of a Romantic landscape painter at first appears to be a strange one for him.
Make no mistake, though, Mr Turner is very much a film about class.
An artist could move easily between the different stratas of society, from rarefied highfalutin’ circles of rich and/or noble clients, to his own, more modest household, to the everyday folks he comes across, including prostitutes, landladies and merchants.
Leigh brings it all to vivid life, whether it is the stately drawing rooms, bustling markets with pig’s heads displayed on tables or filling scenes with giddy girls, toadying sycophants and struggling artists.
He also has fun skewering the snobbish rich, some of whom conduct a hilarious, painful and interminable exchange on gooseberries which Turner is forced to sit through.
A word of caution: There are thick soupy accents here that you want to dip a piece of bread into and soak up. Without the aid of subtitles, they are definitely a challenge to decipher.
For his fine and funny turn, Spall has been showered with accolades, including for Best Actor at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.
It probably helped the film that he and Leigh had worked together in the past, including in Topsy-Turvy (1999) and All Or Nothing (2002).
One might imagine that a painter who paints the light with such delicacy would himself be a sensitive soul, but instead, we get a heavyset man with a gruff manner.
Some of it could well be an act and we also get to see his warm relationship with his father (Paul Jesson) and Turner’s generosity towards a fellow painter, Haydon (Martin Savage).
Part of the reason he is drawn to Mrs Booth is because she sees that he is “a man of great spirit and fine feeling”.
Leigh, though, does not whitewash the less savoury aspects of Turner, including his deplorable treatment of many of the women in his life.
The actor’s wonderful array of grunts and snorts conveys everything from reluctant acquiescence to outright disdain.
(ST)