Mr. Turner Poster

Mr. Turner (2014)

Biography | History 
Rayting:   6.8/10 24.4K votes
Country: UK | France
Language: English
Release date: 11 December 2014

An exploration of the last quarter century of the great, if eccentric, British painter J.M.W. Turner's life.

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User Reviews

richard-1787 6 May 2015

I don't know how anyone sat through all two and a half hours of this at one go in the theater. It took me four sessions to get through it all.

It is a series of largely unconnected scenes, most very short. There is no arc. Turner finally dies, but you don't feel that you know much about him. Nor do you care.

I don't expect a feature film to be a documentary. Hamlet, after all, evidently tells us very little about the real Prince of Denmark of that name. But I do expect a feature film to develop its characters, make us come to understand them, and perhaps even care about them, or care about something. This movie did not do that for me at all. And that was very disappointing, as I really love Turner's paintings.

There are some beautiful, if very short, scenes of gorgeous English countryside, but nothing comes of them. There are lots of scenes that make no sense by themselves. The young Ruskin, for example, comes off as a pretentious fop, but if you don't know it from other sources you would never know from this movie that that young fop would become one of the most influential writers on art for the next century, both in England and in France. We see Constable, and Turner's addition to one of his canvases, but the movie gives us no idea who Constable is, whether he was any different from the many other painters we see in that scene, etc. Just a lot of names. If a movie is going to introduce historical figures, then it should in fact introduce them. It's not sufficient to just run them by us.

In short, I was very disappointed by this movie. A good editor might make something of it by cutting it down an hour and filming some transitions, but I don't know that it would be worth the effort.

skyliner-175-33775 2 December 2014

Fmovies: Let's start with the good - it's beautifully shot and acted. That's it. The film lacks any element of storyline. It begins with a shot of Turner in Holland. But why? We're never told. He goes to Margate to paint. But why there instead of some other part of Britain? We're never told. He gets tied to the mast of a ship in a storm. But that's almost a stand-alone scene. His housekeeper has some sort of progressive disease but we're never told what it is or why she had it. I believe that Turner had a fairly contentious relationship with Constable but all we get here is a very brief scene in which Constable walks out in response to what he considers to be a slight on the part of Turner. If the relationship was as acrimonious as I believe it's reported to have been, couldn't Mike Leigh have used this to greater effect?

Overall the film looks as if somebody has been through a biography of Turner, used a highlighter pen to pick out important episodes and they've been stitched together as a complete piece. As a result, the movie is nothing more than a series of largely disjointed vignettes and represents 3 hours in a cinema to no good effect.

glasslens 1 November 2014

I saw this film last night, in a good cinema with a good screen and new projector and the reason I start off with this will become apparent soon. The film is quite stunning. We sort of drop in to Turner's life at a random point and we follow it on from there. It is not plot-heavy - we are simply viewers of what is happening to this man. Some of what happens to this man are dull and we see a bit of that too. I'm going to analyse the film in a moment, but overall, this is a brilliant film. In the small cinema you could have heard a pin drop - everyone was spellbound. Sometimes when I see a film, my mind drifts to other things, but not during Mr Turner. I was transfixed and left the cinema with that feeling you only get from seeing a masterpiece.

OK, now let's break it down. Mike Leigh is a supremely good director. He allows time for the story. He does not go if for quick cutting - scenes are long and we watch the actors move as though from the far side of the room. This is a relaxing and engaging technique that aspiring directors would do well to copy. His screenplay provides the backbone to the whole film, and it is crafted so well - capturing just who this man Turner is.

Film-goers seem to be interested in stars and actors but to me, actors are just actors - they are two a penny. The real stars are the creative people - Leigh of course and in this case Dick Pope the DOP who has surpassed himself here. The film is visually stunning - which is why you need to see it in a good cinema that gets the best out of the visual image, not a tacky popcornplex. Ask your cinema manager what projectors they use and don't go there if they are not modern top quality units. Dick's camera positioning, his lighting, his colour palate and his camera movement which he uses very sparely are a joy to observe. He does his own operating and that shows. No fast zooming or unnecessary camera movement, no clever stuff. Just visually stunning. Shot on Alexa Plus - the best digital camera - and with beautiful Cooke Speed Panchro Lenses that together produce a better than film-like quality. Oh, and nice to see the sound recordist in the opening credits, because hearing the words clearly as well as the Foley and other sounds is really important - you don't want to struggle to hear things when you are enraptured with the pictures.

Having been a bit disparaging about actors generally, they are all good in this film as you might expect, and Tim Spall's Turner has lashings of character. But, this is where I would be tempted to mark this film down to an 8 from an otherwise 10. I know that Turner was an larger-than-life character but I think it goes just a bit too far - there just too much grunting and strutting about - it all gets a bit waring after a while - nobody would really be like that all the time. Of course, that is down to Leigh who clearly wanted Spall to bring the character to full life like this. I've seen Spall so often in films and on the TV and he often ends up in parts that require larger-than-life acting. His superb Fagin in Oliver Twist for example. He is not an actor who over acts, but a great character actor who is able to magnify his character when the director demands it. Fortunately for us and him, he is not a "film star" - just an ordinary guy who happens to be a very professional character actor. But, actually, all that grunting and strutting is very entertaining and adds a spice to an otherwise factual film - so back to 9!

At two and a half hours, this is a long film

tigerfish50 28 February 2015

Mr. Turner fmovies. Although previous movies about artists haven't set the bar very high, 'Mr Turner' is one of the most authentic films about an individual following this occupation. Director Mike Leigh makes no attempt to string together a conventional biography of Britain's greatest landscape painter - his fragmented account simply observes a variety of the artist's interactions with his beloved father, wealthy patrons, colleagues, critics and mistresses during his later years.

JMW Turner was born and raised the son of a London barber, and although he became the house-guest of aristocrats, he never adopted the persona of a cosmopolitan sophisticate. The film follows his restless workaholic progress from studio to exhibition opening, from brothel to stately home, and on to rented rooms in cheap lodging houses bordering the subject matter which he loved to paint. The painter's early work was relatively conventional as he mimicked the styles of some illustrious predecessors. During the latter part of his life - financially secure and with his reputation established - he embarked on a series of ambitious paintings which anticipated the styles of artists who arrived on the scene several decades afterward. Turner's coarse manners and social awkwardness were infamous, but they are probably exaggerated for dramatic effect in this portrayal. However that's a minor gripe - at the center of the film is Timothy Spall's fine portrayal of an eccentric virtuoso going about the business of being an artist.

ReadingFilm 10 May 2019

Here the invention of the camera heralds cinema, both dismantling, deconstructing the past via 'recording', turning Turner's health south right after that. The film is about the beauty of the artist's mind rivaling god. See how his work exposes his fear of being witnessed as in is his language is not words. How he is a terror to his family and a burden to everyone around him. He is a demon of neglect. The painterly shots show he is constantly in search. He can't not see. Even viewing his own family from the detachment of a frame not partaking in their melodramas. Cinema stares at its early ancestor. Leigh understands, puzzles and relates painting through his own form. One key is like Leigh, Turner constantly brings home he is 'of the people'. He thumbs his nose at intellectual society. They're bored when he has their audience. He's genuinely surprised at the performance mocking him, and feels mutual scorn when The Queen scoffed at his work. Art as the working class. Also why he pitied the other artist and spared him his debt, seeing outsider kinship with him. The film concludes with the two loves reactions. Nihilism is the wrong reading but how his neglect externalized as her rotting skin, and by extension, the world around him rotting. Not only is the film damning of him but preaching balance through objectivity requires our attention. "The sun is god." Rather, "The self is god." Then as the world lead toward streamlining industry, those new paintings show the fear in efficiency as retreating into religiosity, showing Turner as knowing prophetic victor. Post-Note: It made my top ten of the 2010s.

Sergeant_Tibbs 15 October 2014

Four years ago, Mike Leigh released one of the finest films of his oeuvre. I saw Another Year at the London Film Festival gala premiere and I still consider it the only perfect film of this decade thus far. As a result, expectations for his long awaited followup Mr. Turner were very high. Especially as it's ostensibly his most ambitious, even moreso than Topsy-Turvy, also a period drama, that ultimately won 2 Oscars, the only Oscars any of his films ever won. Nevertheless, he's frequently a gift basket receiver at the ceremonies, garnering obligatory screenplay nominations and the odd directing nom, the last of which being for Vera Drake 10 years ago. His organic storytelling, balance of abstract concepts, ability to orchestrate extraordinary performances and his sardonic sense of humour resonate with critics and audiences alike. However, he's not always a crowd pleaser, and Mr. Turner in particular has divided audiences, though not enough to hinder its current awards progress. It's clear to see why. This biopic of the visionary 19th century artist J.M.W. Turner is dense and cryptic. In Leigh's impeccable attention to detail, not just in the production and costume designs, the language is authentic to the convoluted dialect of the upper class of the period and thus it's hard to follow the sparse plot, even for fans. It's unusual for Leigh to adapt a true story, he often starts from scratch, but true to his form his script here defies traditional structure. It's a liberating free form style, sampling scattered moments of Turner's life, not building to anything specific but just exploring what shaped his idiosyncratic perspective. As a result, the film has grit hard to find elsewhere, and although it's difficult to decipher, it's enchanting for some. Headlining the film is Timothy Spall's colossal performance. He's always been a highlight of Leigh's films when he's been involved, especially his knock out performances in Secrets & Lies and All Or Nothing. This is the role he was born to play. Tossing narrative aside, the film's primary concern is the character study of Turner, a brilliant but flawed man, and each sequence adds layers upon layers of dimensions to him as they swirl in anguish. Spall wears those emotions on his sleeve with a perpetual sneer, grumbly grunts and a piercing stare. The moments where he breaks down have the weight of an earthquake. He's at once a force of nature and has a tender vulnerability. But as illustrated by the exquisite opening shot, he is above all a man of his art and watching Turner paint with a chaotic elegance is fascinating, especially as the results develop over the film. The ensemble around Spall gives ample support, including the fleeting appearances from familiar faces such as the seething Ruth Sheen as the bitter mother of his estranged children and the delightful Lesley Manville as a sprightly scientist who conducts an art orientated experiment. The standouts however are the warm glow of Marion Bailey, Turner's landlady of his second home and mistress, and the anxious agony of Dorothy Atkinson, Turner's housekeeper who he frequently engages in sex but who suffers from a disfiguring skin disease. Bailey has her great moments, especially when she's overwhelmingly flattered, but Atkinson in particular has such heartbreaking conviction that she bursts from the background of her scenes. What makes the film Leigh's most ambitious project is the cinematogr

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