Mr. Turner is the second movie to feature here from English writer / director Mike Leigh (pictured above directing Timothy Spall) after his previous entry Naked (1993). This is another movie I saw recently on the Film & Arts channel. I had seen snippets of it before when channel hopping, but I never had the good fortune for its commencement to coincide with my zapping.
Mr. Turner won’t appeal to everyone, that’s for certain. Many will find the painter’s behaviour and mannerisms as peculiar, irritating and perhaps offensive. A large segment of modern ‘need for speed’ audiences could also find this period drama more broadly as dull, perverse and pretentious. This might explain why critics and audiences didn’t see eye to eye on it. The critics gave it 97% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes and the audience just 56%. I can’t remember having seen more disparate opinions between critics and audience about a movie.

IMDB Storyline:
Mr. Turner explores the last quarter century of the great if eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851). Profoundly affected by the death of his father, loved by a housekeeper he takes for granted and occasionally exploits sexually, he forms a close relationship with a seaside landlady with whom he eventually lives incognito in Chelsea, where he dies. Throughout this, he travels, paints, stays with the country aristocracy, visits brothels, is a popular if anarchic member of the Royal Academy of Arts, has himself strapped to the mast of a ship so that he can paint a snowstorm, and is both celebrated and reviled by the public and by royalty.

I have to side with the critics on this one; which by the way, doesn’t occur nearly as often as it did back when this film was released. I can assure you if Mr. Turner was released today in this ideological possessed and conscientized captured culture it wouldn’t have received such overwhelming positive feedback due to a perceived phallocentristic portrayal of historical events including its depiction of women in many scenes. It doesn’t matter if such goings-ons and riff-raff were common-place back then because today’s ‘woke culture’ would have found it contrarian and in conflict with their ‘pseudo – reality’, moral high-ground and virtue seeking.

There are so many aspects of Mr. Turner that I found delectable to the senses that they are too cumbersome to detail here. But to name but a few:
Firstly, it’s attention to detail. Take for example the working replica of Robert Stephenson’s 1830 Planet locomotive from the Manchester Museum Of Science And Industry. It ran on an old railway track in North Wales, which, crucially, ran east-west. They wanted the sun setting behind the train – the conditions Turner had painted and had only one chance to get the shot right, because the train had to be returned the next day. That night there was a glowing sunset. Also consider at the request of Mike Leigh, Timothy Spall spent almost two years learning how to paint in preparation for his role.
Secondly, the exquisite performances. Even the small roles seemed big. Every character in Mr. Turner is indeed a compelling, three-dimensional character. Most certainly not a ‘caricature’. No-one puts a foot wrong, (including Leigh regulars Ruth Sheen and Lesley Manville), but one must really single out Dorothy Atkinson as the unfortunate and much maligned Danby and Marion Bailey as Mrs Booth. Both women are superb, giving us characters that are much more than mere historical sketches. There is something deeply moving in their silent acceptance of Turner’s foibles, (and while Leigh’s dialogue is splendidly ‘of the period’, it’s often in the silences that the film is most effective).

The film excerpt I have included below is a compelling scene of Mr. Turner having his photo taken just after the first photographic process had come into being with the image made on a light-sensitive silver-coated metallic plate. It’s interesting to note Turner’s seemingly acquiescent and ambivalent resignation to the future, and the photographer’s naivety. The new overtaking the old.

References:
1. Mr. Turner – Wikipedia
2. Mr. Turner – IMDB