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Spall is like a moulting, phlegmy Gruffalo.
Mr Turner, Mike Leigh's biopic of the artist, features Timothy Spall's finest performance since Secrets & Lies.
Dir: Mike Leigh. Starring: Timothy Spall, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson, Lesley Manville
In the Mike Leigh film, Mr Turner, you can hardly miss the Mister.
Joseph Mallord William is a sore thumb from the opening scene, where he’s sketching a windmill somewhere in rural Holland, poised like a pot-bellied stork among the rushes.
The scene tells you everything you need to know about the man and the places he feels happiest: in short, it’s landscape as portrait, and Turner would have smiled at that.
Leigh’s film is a supremely enjoyable biopic of the English artist known as “the painter of light” – someone whose canvases, which revelled in the possibilities of colour and movement, could almost be early forerunners of cinema.
Turner is played by Timothy Spall, who gives the finest performance of his career to date, surpassing even his work in Leigh’s Secrets and Lies.
It won Spall the best actor prize at Cannes, and the question now is just how far the role can take him: the the Baftas, almost inevitably; as far as the Oscars, very possibly.
It’s a musty performance, one that gets in your clothes and hair, and that’s absolutely meant as a compliment.
Spall coughs and shambles about the place like a moulting, phlegmy Gruffalo, eyes bright and hungry, bottom lip jutting proudly forward like the spout of a custard jug.
His repertoire of grunts alone comfortably extends past a hundred, and you wonder if perhaps Spall went Method for the role, living for years in a sty until he got the voice, posture and smell just right.
But beyond the troughfuls of fun tics, Spall makes Turner tenderly and totally human, which has the effect of making his artistic talents seem even more God-given.
The film begins with Turner nd in the ascendant.
He works from a studio in his London town house, where his housekeeper Hannah and elderly father, William Senior keep things ticking over.
Turner’s dealings with them both, including solemn groping of the former, are brisk and straightforward.
The painting process, though, is very different.
Leigh shoots it in a way that it sometimes resembles an occult ritual.
Early in the film, when Turner’s father visits a paint shop to replenish his son’s supplies, you see the pigments are piled up on silver platters, like spices in a souk, or potion ingredients, begging to be mixed.
Light is what moves Turner, and he moves with the light. -- The sun is God.
The film spans the quarter-century until his death, and we follow him wherever he goes.
At a patron’s country estate, he tussles with a gloomy rival (Martin Savage) and tries to sing a Purcell aria (from "Dido" what else) – he does it amusingly badly but also tenderly, and finding the precise point of articulation between the two is pure, neat Leigh.
In Margate, Turner meets a friendly landlady, who comes to play an important role in his later life.
At the Royal Academy, we see him buzzing around, joking with friends, dishing out advice and, in a perfect, self-contained skit, winding up John Constable.
The film is studded with such gem-like supporting roles, many of which are taken by regular Leigh players, including Lesley Manville and Ruth Sheen.
Picking favourites is too difficult, but let’s just say the lisping writer and patron John Ruskin, hilariously played as an oblivious smartypants, has stwuck a chord with a few of us cwitics.
In its shape, Mr Turner is very much like Topsy-Turvy, Leigh’s superb, under-seen film about the comic-opera writers WS Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, set during the writing of The Mikado.
But this is an even more ambitious work about the making of art, in which the process is not just shown as an almighty, if often very funny, strain, but something that, when done correctly, and with the stars aligned just so, can bear the artist past death and into history.
When Leigh recreates the scene that inspired Turner’s 1839 masterpiece The Fighting Temeraire, he shows the artist finding hope not in the old, exhausted warship being tugged to her last berth, but the squat, blackened tugboat in front.
“The ghost of the past,” says one of his friends, nodding sorrowfully at the larger vessel.
“No,” Turner barks.
“The past is the past. You’re observing the future! Smoke. Iron. Steam!”
Leigh and Spall’s genius is to show us both in one man: Turner is future and past, progress and history, tugboat and Temeraire.
What the other newspapers are saying
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian:
"Mr Turner is funny, humane and visually immaculate, hitting its confident stride straight away. It combines domestic intimacy with an epic sweep, and a lyrical gentleness pervades each scene, tragic or comic. Every line, every detail, every minor character, however casual or apparently superfluous, is absolutely necessary."
Geoffrey MacNab, The Independent: "Mike Leigh's biopic is a rambling, richly detailed character study with a magnificent central performance from Timothy Spall. This may be 19th-century costume fare but it is made with the same precise attention to its protagonists' yearnings and comic foibles as we find in Leigh's contemporary dramas with Spall, whether Secrets and Lies or his woefully underrated All Or Nothing."
Dave Calhoun, Time Out: "Not only do we end up with a vivid, surprising and soulful sense of one artist and his work, but Leigh also offers us a commanding view of a city, London, and country at the dawn of the modern age and of a man being overawed and overtaken by new technologies such as photography and the railways. As ever with Leigh, 'Mr Turner' addresses the big questions with small moments. It's an extraordinary film, all at once strange, entertaining, thoughtful and exciting."
Nigel Andrews, Financial Times: "It’s a beautiful film because it isn’t afraid of beauty’s uglinesses. Artists don’t personify the ideal or dazzling worlds they envision. They are the workshop, not the work. So it’s right, in a biopic, that we see the mess of the creative life."
David Sexton, Evening Standard: "Mike Leigh takes the painting seriously enough. He says he used actors in the film who could actually paint and Timothy Spall, who plays Turner so magnificently, learned to do so for the part. Yet the film never tries to explain Turner’s art, merely showing his mastery by the speed and certainty with which he attacks the canvas, scrubbing it with a brush, rubbing it with his finger, spitting at it even."
Mr Turner, Mike Leigh's biopic of the artist, features Timothy Spall's finest performance since Secrets & Lies.
Dir: Mike Leigh. Starring: Timothy Spall, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson, Lesley Manville
In the Mike Leigh film, Mr Turner, you can hardly miss the Mister.
Joseph Mallord William is a sore thumb from the opening scene, where he’s sketching a windmill somewhere in rural Holland, poised like a pot-bellied stork among the rushes.
The scene tells you everything you need to know about the man and the places he feels happiest: in short, it’s landscape as portrait, and Turner would have smiled at that.
Leigh’s film is a supremely enjoyable biopic of the English artist known as “the painter of light” – someone whose canvases, which revelled in the possibilities of colour and movement, could almost be early forerunners of cinema.
Turner is played by Timothy Spall, who gives the finest performance of his career to date, surpassing even his work in Leigh’s Secrets and Lies.
It won Spall the best actor prize at Cannes, and the question now is just how far the role can take him: the the Baftas, almost inevitably; as far as the Oscars, very possibly.
It’s a musty performance, one that gets in your clothes and hair, and that’s absolutely meant as a compliment.
Spall coughs and shambles about the place like a moulting, phlegmy Gruffalo, eyes bright and hungry, bottom lip jutting proudly forward like the spout of a custard jug.
His repertoire of grunts alone comfortably extends past a hundred, and you wonder if perhaps Spall went Method for the role, living for years in a sty until he got the voice, posture and smell just right.
But beyond the troughfuls of fun tics, Spall makes Turner tenderly and totally human, which has the effect of making his artistic talents seem even more God-given.
The film begins with Turner nd in the ascendant.
He works from a studio in his London town house, where his housekeeper Hannah and elderly father, William Senior keep things ticking over.
Turner’s dealings with them both, including solemn groping of the former, are brisk and straightforward.
The painting process, though, is very different.
Leigh shoots it in a way that it sometimes resembles an occult ritual.
Early in the film, when Turner’s father visits a paint shop to replenish his son’s supplies, you see the pigments are piled up on silver platters, like spices in a souk, or potion ingredients, begging to be mixed.
Light is what moves Turner, and he moves with the light. -- The sun is God.
The film spans the quarter-century until his death, and we follow him wherever he goes.
At a patron’s country estate, he tussles with a gloomy rival (Martin Savage) and tries to sing a Purcell aria (from "Dido" what else) – he does it amusingly badly but also tenderly, and finding the precise point of articulation between the two is pure, neat Leigh.
In Margate, Turner meets a friendly landlady, who comes to play an important role in his later life.
At the Royal Academy, we see him buzzing around, joking with friends, dishing out advice and, in a perfect, self-contained skit, winding up John Constable.
The film is studded with such gem-like supporting roles, many of which are taken by regular Leigh players, including Lesley Manville and Ruth Sheen.
Picking favourites is too difficult, but let’s just say the lisping writer and patron John Ruskin, hilariously played as an oblivious smartypants, has stwuck a chord with a few of us cwitics.
In its shape, Mr Turner is very much like Topsy-Turvy, Leigh’s superb, under-seen film about the comic-opera writers WS Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, set during the writing of The Mikado.
But this is an even more ambitious work about the making of art, in which the process is not just shown as an almighty, if often very funny, strain, but something that, when done correctly, and with the stars aligned just so, can bear the artist past death and into history.
When Leigh recreates the scene that inspired Turner’s 1839 masterpiece The Fighting Temeraire, he shows the artist finding hope not in the old, exhausted warship being tugged to her last berth, but the squat, blackened tugboat in front.
“The ghost of the past,” says one of his friends, nodding sorrowfully at the larger vessel.
“No,” Turner barks.
“The past is the past. You’re observing the future! Smoke. Iron. Steam!”
Leigh and Spall’s genius is to show us both in one man: Turner is future and past, progress and history, tugboat and Temeraire.
What the other newspapers are saying
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian:
"Mr Turner is funny, humane and visually immaculate, hitting its confident stride straight away. It combines domestic intimacy with an epic sweep, and a lyrical gentleness pervades each scene, tragic or comic. Every line, every detail, every minor character, however casual or apparently superfluous, is absolutely necessary."
Geoffrey MacNab, The Independent: "Mike Leigh's biopic is a rambling, richly detailed character study with a magnificent central performance from Timothy Spall. This may be 19th-century costume fare but it is made with the same precise attention to its protagonists' yearnings and comic foibles as we find in Leigh's contemporary dramas with Spall, whether Secrets and Lies or his woefully underrated All Or Nothing."
Dave Calhoun, Time Out: "Not only do we end up with a vivid, surprising and soulful sense of one artist and his work, but Leigh also offers us a commanding view of a city, London, and country at the dawn of the modern age and of a man being overawed and overtaken by new technologies such as photography and the railways. As ever with Leigh, 'Mr Turner' addresses the big questions with small moments. It's an extraordinary film, all at once strange, entertaining, thoughtful and exciting."
Nigel Andrews, Financial Times: "It’s a beautiful film because it isn’t afraid of beauty’s uglinesses. Artists don’t personify the ideal or dazzling worlds they envision. They are the workshop, not the work. So it’s right, in a biopic, that we see the mess of the creative life."
David Sexton, Evening Standard: "Mike Leigh takes the painting seriously enough. He says he used actors in the film who could actually paint and Timothy Spall, who plays Turner so magnificently, learned to do so for the part. Yet the film never tries to explain Turner’s art, merely showing his mastery by the speed and certainty with which he attacks the canvas, scrubbing it with a brush, rubbing it with his finger, spitting at it even."
Nice review,thanks.
Recently went to Margate to see the Turner Contemporary. Very enjoyable!
Makes a fine daytrip from London!
What a wonderful five-star review. JMW Turner was a great painter from a
great era of true art and, Timothy Spall brings the painter to life as
described.
What a great review! "Spout of a custard jug" Epic!
Great.
This does not come from a padded armchair at
some stuffy gentleman's club.
How refreshing to give us a first rate article by someone who
knows his subject and communicates his passion so clearly; the polar opposite of
the inane drivel routinely put out by Magneto. I read for quality writing such as this piece on Turner.
Excellent director.
Good to see That your IKBrunel Avatar has the cigar firmly In Place..
Glad to read this great review.
A great artist and an excellent actor but unfortunately Leigh is only a
good director and only that when he doesn't involve his own brand of leftist
luvvie politics.
Mental note that on next visit to the capital to visit the National and gaze at the painting of the "The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth for breaking up", to give it its full title.
Mental note that on next visit to the capital to visit the National and gaze at the painting of the "The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth for breaking up", to give it its full title.
By applying labels could you be restricting potential sources of
pleasure?
Monet credited Turner with the invention of impressionism (so-called) but
the French will never concede it!
Interesting to see Ruskin's portrayal in this film (especially as
he was championing the PRB cause around that time.
PS Turner and Constable did once meet at an Academy dinner.
By all accounts, Constable was rather in awe of his contemporary.
PS Turner and Constable did once meet at an Academy dinner.
By all accounts, Constable was rather in awe of his contemporary.
Best thing about this review (and the film) is it made me want to revisit
said painting. What a stunner. Very curious to see any film that deals with a
painter's life - how it handles compositions within compositions.
When I saw his painting The Fighting Temeraire, for the first time I
was
only about 10 years old, and I really did believe the subject of the
painting was the steam tug-boat: If Mr Collin is correct it would seem
that my observation was also correct. However Turner has more than
captured the advance of technology in this painting, he has paid tribute
to a moving slice of history. HMS Temeraire was in the battle of
Trafalgar: more than that it saved the HMS Victory, although its action
was too late to save Admiral Nelson.
only about 10 years old, and I really did believe the subject of the
painting was the steam tug-boat: If Mr Collin is correct it would seem
that my observation was also correct. However Turner has more than
captured the advance of technology in this painting, he has paid tribute
to a moving slice of history. HMS Temeraire was in the battle of
Trafalgar: more than that it saved the HMS Victory, although its action
was too late to save Admiral Nelson.
Timothy Spall appears to be just the
man for the task.
I think this could become one of the great classics of British cinema,
looks stunning and perfectly cast.
Having recently read a biography of this great Englishman, I can vouch that
the writer of this piece totally "gets it". JMW Turner had a somewhat crude turn
of mind, was profane and had the hands of a nineteenth century farm
labourer...but many wealthy patrons worshipped him, including the daughter of
one, quite young, who, sitting beside him as he demonstrated his craft at speed,
swore that "he conjured images from life onto the canvas, seemingly using
nothing but his thumbnails."
Great comment, and very informative.
This film is getting glowing reviews left, right and centre.
just give a star rating.
See the top of the page, there's 5-stars
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