Mr. Turner 2014

I finally caught up with Mr. Turner, Mike Leigh’s beautiful, difficult and demanding film about the great 19^th century landscape and visionary painter Joseph Mallord William Turner. The film is richly textured, detailed and colored and is anchored by a superb performance by the great British actor Timothy Spall who was drastically overlooked by the Oscars. In fact I have problems with the Oscars sad history of overlooking movies about artists not only in the acting categories but also in the best picture nods. The last actors (to my knowledge) who were nominated for playing artists goes way back to 1956 when both Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn was nominated for playing Van Gogh and Gauguin in “Lust For Life” with Quinn actually winning for supporting actor. I am shocked over this oversight and slight and I might boycott the Oscars this year over this grave injustice. But of course I jest. 
                   This is not a film for everyone, it’s long and to some it might seem that it’s from another planet, after all this is England is the mid 1800’s, when the long reign of Queen Victoria was just beginning.  I think that most artists will find it engrossing and highly entertaining as Leigh shows us the life and times of this great artist. Turner was not an easy man to like, he was at times mean, crude and horrible to women, using them as if they were props in a still life painting to be tossed out when finished with them. 
                   But he was if we are to believe the film loyal and deeply committed to some. This is shown in the early scenes between him and his father who is devoted to his son and oversees his home and studio to the point of ordering his painting supplies and canvas which we see in a marvelous scene (one of many such marvelous scenes).
               There are also many wonderful performances by women including Dorothy Atkinson as Turner’s sad shuffling hunched over homely and ultimately heartbreaking loyal housekeeper who also serves as a sexual release for him when he’s in the mood, the great Ruth Sheen as his ex-mistress and mother of his children who in a few scenes huffs and puffs at him in angry spurts, Leslie Manville (another favorite of mine) as the Scottish scientist Mary Somerville and Marion Bailey as the warm widow Sophia Booth who runs a boarding house in a costal town where Turner anonymously stays when on painting trips  and who becomes Turner’s loving and supportive companion during his last years. Leigh is brilliant when directing and writing for actresses and you can see this in spades in Mr. Turner and is one of the reasons among many why I consider him one of the great directors working today.
             There is much to relish in this gorgeous film besides the great performances, there are individual scenes that glow in dim candle light, in rich and lavish drawing rooms of the wealthy, the superb art directed studio and private viewing room of Turner’s, the large exhibition spaces of the royal academy and the dingy everyday rooms of a brothel and boarding house. And then of course there are the outdoor scenes. Landscapes and seascapes that Turner cherished and painted which are rendered by the great cinematographer Dick Pope that brought audible gasps of pleasure from the audience I saw it with. One of the ten best films of 2014.