Review of Mr. Turner (2014) by David C — 25 Jan 2015

Mr. Turner does almost the opposite of what most biopics do, and in doing so so affectively, practically blows them all out of the water. It's superbly crafted technically with an amazing performance from Timothy Spall, creating a portrait, or a painting of Turner's life thats overall impact amazed me.

Rarely, if ever have I seen a period drama so well immersed in its time. The production design and costumes are stunningly authentic. The dialect as well has been converted a couple of centuries back and the actors seem to inhabit this world seamlessly. It does not try to impress with the production elements or use an upward moving crane shot of the town center to establish the bustling times with a flute-based score to lead the mood like many biopics might. Leigh does not want to flaunt the period, he just shows what is there. Gary Yershon's score is actually quite eerie, but it's great. The cinematography is at times breathtaking, with many shots looking like paintings and with the sun and glow of Turner's work replicated everywhere.

Timothy Spall's performance embodies the film itself. He is very unlike anyone else in the film in his behavior and how he bumbles through his life. His snarls and grunts are their own language, and his mannerisms are inconsistent, but we never get the false sense that he's bipolar or has multiple personalities. He is animalistic, intellectual, caring, and disdainful, all of these things, and yet none of them alone. The core of his soul is mysterious, impossible to dig out, yet many characters in the film attempt to define him and his paintings, and Spall's Turner doesn't seem to understand the meaning of definition. Spall is also so much fun to watch, and he's often very funny if you want to see it that way, and sometimes it's obviously funny. This is not the kind of movie where the character changes or realizes anything, he just is. And Spall's performance embodies this man who just is. I couldn't say enough about his performance, and maybe saying things is not the best way to describe it.

There is no "Rosebud" in Mr. Turner. It is not a movie that attempts to define the man, boil him down to one flaw, truth, or desire, it is a portrait of the life of a man who would see something in nature and feel like painting it. Art aficionados in the film attempt to discover the meaning of Turner's work, as Turner listens, and we see that he has no such intention to make his paintings mean any particular thing. That is exactly the point of the film itself, to create a biopic that rids our notion to define the protagonist, to find the meaning in a life, or life itself, because how can one really carve an entire life into anything? When Mr. Turner ended, I was amazed that with this two and-a-half hour biopic, that Mike Leigh made a film that put nothing into borders, with no conventional storyline but that I wanted nothing more out of. I knew that I had seen the essence of Turner's life, and in a world where we have a desire to find exactly what everything is and what it means, Mr. Turner makes the case that nothing can be any thing, it all just is. For sure, a masterpiece.