Mr Turner ***** (2014, Timothy Spall, Paul Jesson, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey) – Movie Review

With the help of Timothy Spall’s triumphant performance and Dick Pope’s cinematography, Mike Leigh explores the last 25 years of artist J M W Turner, in the 2014 biopic Mr Turner.

With the help of Timothy Spall’s triumphant Cannes Best Actor performance and Dick Pope’s cinematography, director Mike Leigh imaginatively explores the middle age to old last 25 years in the life of the great, eccentric British painter J M W Turner (1775–1851).

Leigh’s writing is impressive, often inspired, providing a banquet of food for thought and a plethora of key items to  touch the emotions, as well as strong, telling, period-sounding dialogue that 2014 actors can actually speak without sounding uncomfy or just plain daft.

Many will find the two and a half hours running time ‘too long’ and will claim to be lost without any simple-minded checking off of biographical details, with Leigh bravely resisting intertitles telling us where we are and when we are in the narrative. But then, this isn’t an art or history lecture or a narrative. It’s a series of impressionistic moments in a life, in this case Turner’s life, many of them trivial but still revealing as well as entertaining, as in ‘real life’. It goes for universal truth and significance, starting out from the particular of Turner.

The impressionism in the writing of the screenplay no doubt reflects Turner’s style of art, just as Dick Pope’s cinematography reflects Turner’s visual style. Pope’s imaginative and stylish work is a bit of a major triumph, far exceeding the BBC teatime serial look you’d expect, just as the film far exceeds the BBC teatime serial story that it could easily and complacently have fallen down into. Pope greatly deserved the honour of his Cannes Vulcain Prize for the Technical Artist ‘For bringing to light the works of Turner in the movie.

The movie aims at being a work of art in itself, and succeeds. It may be that it isn’t a great work of art, but it’s a very fine and distinguished one. In an older folks’ film for grownups, Leigh mixes humour, though stopping short of actual laughs, with reflective melancholy, though the overall mood is melancholic as characters struggle largely vainly in life and then die. The film has an odd, slightly alienating tone. With Leigh looking down on Turner from the heights of a long-term view, it’s lofty and a shade depressing, but all that unusual stuff helps to keep it special.

Leigh manages largely to avoid the pitfalls of movie artist biopics, mostly by simply not making a biopic, just doing what he always does, writing nice, tasty dialogue. I feel the direction is less surefooted, and maybe just for once Leigh could have handed his screenplay over to someone else. The direction is generous and efficient but plain and anonymous, though that allows Leigh’s fellow workers to get on with producing their magic. Of course, as a man of the theatre, Leigh certainly does direct actors painstakingly and well, though, and he brings along some of his favourites.

Spall is miscast as Turner, looking nothing like him, and he dangerously accrues a whole language of mumbles, grunts and groans to his performance, but nevertheless he still triumphs. He looks right in Victorian gear and settings, and sounds right in his period language. He’s one of our great movie actors as well as a national treasure, and he sure wasn’t going to mess up this wonderful star role chance. Surprisingly sweet and subtle, he makes all his little moments count, along with the big ones. You could imagine Jim Broadbent or Tom Wilkinson being more regulation casting as Turner, but Spall nails it.

In a very fine ensemble of players, Paul Jesson and Marion Bailey are outstanding, with Jesson as Turner’s delightful, ex-barber dad William and Bailey as his Margate seaside landlady Sophia Booth. These are subtle, haunting performances, way above and beyond duty or paycheck.

Gary Yershon’s insistent score is all too much, but Suzie Davies’s production designs and Jacqueline Durran’s costumes are superb. Bafta and Critics Circle awards need to be scattered here.

Spall spent almost two years learning how to paint for the film.

Despite this, Mr Turner was shamefully snubbed in the Bafta nominations. Leigh’s name was missing from the best director list and Mr Turner made neither the Best Film nor the Outstanding British Film category. And there was also no leading actor nomination for Timothy Spall. His wife, Shane, tweeted: ‘Exceedingly proud of my best friend, Timothy Spall, today for shrugging his shoulders and making the tea.’ Bafta did give Dick Pope’s cinematography a nomination, and there were three others: for hair and make-up, production design and costumes. 

Sam Kelly

It’s the last appearance by comedy treasure Sam Kelly, who appears as Theatre Actor. He died 0n June 14 2014 of cancer, aged 70. He was the illiterate crook ‘Bunny’ Warren in Porridge and Captain Hans Geering in ‘Allo ‘Allo! Recently he was Derrick in Common People (2013).

Richard Pope (1947 – 22 October 2024)

British cinematographer Dick Pope died on 22 October 2024 at the age of 77. He was was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography and best known for his work with Mike Leigh. Their films together are Life Is Sweet, Naked, Secrets & Lies, Career Girls, Topsy-Turvy, All or Nothing, Vera Drake, Happy-Go-Lucky, Another Year, Mr Turner, Peterloo and Hard Truths.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

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