Oscar season means a glut of prestige pictures and scads of biopics that skew close to a proven formula, hitting all the familiar highs and lows while condensing decades of (if not an entire) human life into a palatable two hours and change of life-affirming earnestness. So anytime a movie deviates from that norm in any appreciable fashion I feel like taking to the rooftops and shouting its praises, so if you look out your window and see somebody screaming about Mike Leigh’s gorgeous frame composition and Timothy Spall’s reserved brilliance then you’ll know it was me. Mr. Turner is a gorgeous period piece that allows a rarely-seen vantage point to be seen on screen – that of art as a career.
So often we’re treated to visions of purported great artists in cinema that elide the particulars of their situation and ask us to buy their giftedness on faith (James Franco’s depiction of a serious artist as a man who wrings out paint like a wheezing Denny’s patron covering their fries in ketchup from last year’s Third Person comes to mind), so it’s an absolute delight to have a film zero in on the workaday lifestyle of a creative genius as is done here. J.M.W. Turner isn’t an immediately known quantity to those with only a passing knowledge of art history, a man whose beautiful landscape paintings were a controversial shift from the history painting mode that dominated his time and whose portraits of nature’s wild encroach upon these picturesque idylls (call it the bucolic plague) were early harbingers of the impressionist movement.
The film doesn’t drily recount historical factoids nor have Turner’s famous contemporaries walk into the frame only to be addressed by their full names, it instead plants us directly into the working days of an extremely prolific artist. He debates the cost of pigment, strolls through the Royal Academy of Arts causing waves amongst his fellow artists (a priceless scene unfolds where his addition of a blotch of red paint to a work is seen as a direct attack on all that his peers hold dear), and discusses light and its refractions endlessly with those around him. So rarely have we seen great talents depicted as being part of a profession instead of merely divinely inspired, that despite the fact that the film’s pacing could generously be described as lugubrious it is never anything less than riveting.
It certainly helps when you have a performer as gifted as Timothy Spall anchoring such a portrayal. It’s not a particularly external performance – outside of the realm of his work communication is generally limited to differently-pitched grunts that convey displeasure, agreement and a whole spectrum of reactions despite sounding exactly alike – but in those rare moments where his emotions rise to the surface like the crashing waves he so often depicted, a complex and intriguing personality is revealed. Turner is a deeply-flawed person, whose use and abuse of those around him (not the least of which is his housekeeper played by Dorothy Atkinson) suggests a man scarcely aware of social niceties or acceptable human behavior, a notion furthered by the way he summarily dismissed the mother of his two children whom he refuses to acknowledge. That these indefensible behaviors can be understood and yet you still remain transfixed by Turner is a credit to Spall’s full-bodied portrayal and ability to convey unseen depths.
And this performance is perfectly suited to Mike Leigh’s generally emotionally reserved mode of filmmaking. Although he spends most of his career crafting emotionally exquisite ‘kitchen-sink’ dramas, the rare opportunities he has afforded himself to work in this historical epic mode (such as here or in Topsy-Turvy) have resulted in exquisite visualizations of the periods they take place in. With the help of cinematographer Dick Pope (whose Oscar nomination is richly deserved, even if it was part of a mispronunciation that will last a lifetime), Leigh has crafted a lush picture with frequent examples of Turner ambling through a cliffside or country scene as visually ravishing as one of his portraits. Although the steady pacing and recalcitrant character at its lead might scare many off of connecting with the material, it is a portrait with depth and many riches to those who are willing to take the journey.
