[Last Film I Watch] Mr. Turner (2014) [8/10]
Title: Mr. Turner
Year: 2014
Country: UK, France, Germany
Language: English, Dutch, Italian
Genre: Biography, Drama
Director: Mike Leigh
Writer: Mike Leigh
Music: Gary Yershon
Cinematography: Dick Pope
Cast:
Timothy Spall
Dorothy Atkinson
Marion Bailey
Paul Jesson
Lesley Manville
Martin Savage
David Horovitch
Ruth Sheen
James Fleet
Peter Wight
Karl Johnson
Jamie Thomas King
Mark Stanley
Robert Portal
Simon Chandler
Joshua McGuire
Karina Fernandez
Stuart McQuarrie
Sylvestra Le Touzel
Leo Bill
Sinead Matthews
James Norton
Tom Wlaschiha
Kate O'Flynn
Richard Bremmer
Niall Buggy
Tom Edden
Fred Pearson
Patrick Godfrey
Clive Francis
Nicholas Jones
Roger Ashton-Griffiths
Edward de Souza
Oliver Maltman
Sam Kelly
Rating: 8/10
Mike Leigh’s newest endeavour is a two-and-a-half hours long biographic film about British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), a watercolour landscape painting maestro, the film chronically narrates the last quarter of Turner’s life, stars Leigh’s longtime teammate Timothy Spall in an once-in-a-blue-moon leading role which won him BEST ACTOR in Cannes last year.
Unequivocally this film is second to none if it can be crowned as the most beautiful film of 2014, artistically enthralling thanks to the utterly breathtaking cinematography of DP Dick Pope, which concisely tallies with Turner’s own persistent study on light and colour, and viewers can get a peek of his relentless thirst from the magnet experiment conducted by Ms. Somerville (a brilliant cameo by Lesley Manville), or later his piqued interest of the daguerreotype technique, mocks every painter would take a camera with him; also his valour as a true artist, dares a face-to-face encounter with a rough tempest on the sea, just to observe its colour. And the most memorable one is when Leigh and Spall re-enact the action of Turner purposefully adding a wanton brush of red on his own work, instead of blemishing a masterpiece, he turns it into a wonder by his master stroke which stuns all his fellow artists in the academy.
Turner is quite a prolific artist, but Leigh doesn’t invest too much in the time he spends in front of the easel (although Spall learned painting for 2 years to prepare for his role), and conspicuously accentuates the eccentricity of the artist, Turner never marries, he lives with his father William (Jesson), whom he establishes a close affinity with, and the latter is also his loyal advocate and supporter; nevertheless he is cruelly aloof to his mistress Sarah (Ruth), with whom they have two grown girls and one grandchild, and barbarically unleashes his sexual urge to his housemaid Hannah (Atkinson). When his father passes away, Turner strikes up an incognito partnership with a two-time widow Sophia Booth (Bailey), they spend almost two decades together until his demise.
While in the academy, Turner is also notorious for his singularity in spite of his talent, he is well-admired, but don’t ever consider him as a gregarious crowd-pleaser, his insult to the stuck-up patricians is too scathing to stomach. Yet, Turner is never gluttonous for money, he is neither an ill-fated artist being unrecognised all his life (he gets recognition in a rather young age), nor a shooting-star prodigy, in his final days, one munificent patron intends to handsomely buy all his works, but he affirmatively rejects since he wants to bequeath them to the country.
Mr. Spall emanates a waft of stubbornness with all the grunts and groans to portray Turner as if he is a tough pangolin impenetrable to the exterior world, mostly self-indulges in his vocation, traipses in the nature motherland and avoids any entanglement with people, only his father and Sophia, are the ones he projects real feelings to, but they are not coexisted, Sophia can be seen as a substitute of a caretaker after William’s death, Spall magnificently wrings out all his effort to give Turner a full set of flesh and blood. One under-the-radar-but-great supporting performance is from Dorothy Atkinson, perpetually hunches her pint-size body in a wobbly posture, inflicted with unstated malady, like an apparition, she lingers perceivably longer than a usual maid around Turner, even when he has guests or patrons to see to, Leigh wilfully frames on her body language to give an uneasy feeling of her character, without revealing any clues in plain words, Hannah may seem to be intelligently impaired, but Atkinson’s note-perfect performance evokes her inward states in a full-blown presentation of her desire, her longing and her grievance. Both her and Spall deserve more plaudits for their taxing undertakings, sadly both Oscar and BAFTA blatantly overlook them in spite of a few nominations in the technique departments, although Gary Yershon’s classical score doesn’t entirely measure up to the brilliancy of the rest of the film, and it is just fascinating to see Leigh still in the high point of his creativity and prowess.
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