Painting Pictures: Mr Turner (Dir Mike Leigh, 2h30m, 2014)

To millions, JMW Turner is the eternal youth, staring out of his 1799 self-portrait that now hangs in the Turner Gallery in Tate Britain, and is reproduced on the British £20 note. Alongside this moneterised portrait, is Turner's The Fighting Temeraire, tugged to her last berth to be broken up, painted in 1838, voted the 'Nation's Favourite Painting' in 2005, and hung in the National Gallery. Thirty nine years separate these two, and the latter painting epitomises the work of the older Turner, in his fifties onwards. Turner (Timothy Spall) is a man enraptured by light, and its translation to the canvas, but as a man, his flawed relationships affect those around him.

Mike Leigh, a highly regarded director for television, cinema and the theatre is probably best known outside the UK for his two period pieces, Vera Drake (2004) and the charming Happy-Go-Lucky (2008). Leigh is one of the best remaining examples of British Realism, (alongside Ken Loach), a movement of cinema birthed, like French and Italian Neo-Realism, from the lives of the working and lower-middle class. His work is also different, as he always works with a core troupe of actors and frequently develops both and character via improvision. This core groups includes Spall, and main actresses Dorothy Atkinson and Marion Bailey (alongside actors such as David Thewlis and Alison Steadman), have been the key tenants of Leigh's work since the 1960s.

The Master at work; Timothy Spall as JMW Turner

Focusing on the final twenty-five years of Turner's life, the film begins with the artist returning from his time in Holland-a beautiful opening sequence of a perfectly Turnerish landscape and sunset, into which Turner strolls-to his father (Paul Jesson), who acts as his assistant, canvas maker, and whom the younger Turner is close to. This love for his father and the fellow artists that surround him does not extend to the women in his life at this point. His housekeeper, Hannah Danby-Atkinson-'s love for him is largely unreciprocated and she is-apart from his physical relationship with her-taken for granted. This callousness extends to Turner's relationship with his former love Sarah Danby (Ruth Sheen), who is largely ignored by the painter, and whose daughters with him are unacknowledged.

Against this raffish domestic life, where Turner is often oafish-it's impressive that so much dismissiveness and coldness towards his loved ones can come out of a monosyllabic grunt as Spall does for much of this film-he is also undeniably charming-where this mask of roughness falls away to reveal an euridite man with a love of art, literature, and creation. Moreover, against this often sullen and isolated figure-Leigh's camera often dwells on the stomping black-clad Spall as he moves through scenes. Strongly affected by his father's death, Turner heads to Margate, where he falls in love, incognito, with the figure of Sophia Booth (Marion Bailey), who forms a close, and loving relationship with Turner, a sharp and at bittersweet comparison to the forgotten Danby women.

Turner in private, with the second love of his life, Sophia Booth (Marion Bailey), left

Leigh's genius, though, is in interposing the private and public life of one of the 19th century's great creative forces, a trick he has already orchestrated for Mssrs Gilbert and Sullivan in Topsy-Turvy (1999). Shortly after his return to London, Turner travels to Petworth House, the seat of Lord Egremont, one of his wealthy patrons, and we see an entirely different side to the gruff stolid figure he has cut before; that of the figure of High Society, one of the nation's prominent painters, surrounded for much of this sequence, with a small group of fellow creatives and landed gentry. What is more, Turner is revealed to be a sensitive man of culture, brought nearly to tears by Purcell's Dido's Lament played during his stay. We later see him meet with art and social critic John Ruskin (Joshua McGuire), one of his lifelong champions, with natural philosopher and groundbreaking scientist, Mary Somerville (Lesley Manville), and, later, living in Margate, Turner also encounters, and is fascinated at the work of, pioneer of photography, John Edwin Mayall (Leo Bill).

But it is as a painter that the film captures Turner in the round; at points, the film seems to be caught up in Turner's artistic eye, cinematographer Dick Pope capturing the ravishing sunsets, the wispy light, the play of the light that, in great fists and daubs of paint and smears and spits, Spall seeks to capture, the most evocative of these sequences being the inspiration of the creation of Snow Storm (1842) and Rain, Steam and Speed (1844). Added to these evocations of Turner's visual style that permeate into the very fabric of the film is Spall's recreation of the painter's style. This, in particular, allows some truly dazzling shots where the camera will slowly pan around to show Turner hard at work on what, in many cases, is one of the most famous paintings in British Art, and, in more recent years, Spall's first exhibition of paintings in 2021 showing an undeniably Turner-ish influence.

An exquisite film of light and humanity; Mr Turner is Leigh at his best

It is his relationship with artists that we see both sides of Turner; one of the film's most evocative sequences is in his rivalry with Constable-a rivalry that, by the by, could be the focus of an entire film, rather than a brushstroke in the broad canvas of it, as with one deliberate dab of red across a canvas, Turner shows his mastery of paint, and painting, to which his rivals in the Royal Academy salon of 1832 can only stare in amazement, with Constable (James Fleet) himself muttering, floored by his rival, "He's been here and fired a gun". It is a perfect meeting, in a sequence that sees Turner dominate the scene, not a moment of the curmudgeon as he perfectly navigates the social sphere of his peers, freely giving advice, of Turner the painter and Turner the man at their best, and their most assured.

Against this, in later sequences, Turner seems to lose hold of all of these plaudits. Whilst his art remains sought after, the once celebrated figure's experimentation runs foul of the very people who once lauded his work, his humiliation topped by the mockery of the new young Queen Victoria and her Consort, Prince Albert. In social circles his dismissive behaviour of the ultimately doomed figure of Haydon (Martin Savage), who repeatedly begs him for his support among the elite of the Royal Academy, and for financial assistance, declined by Turner at every turn eventually comes to haunt Turner, whilst his ailing health slowly robs him of the ability to paint.

Yet, it is in these moments that the film is at its most illuminating, its most exquisite, its most concerned, as Leigh can be at his most profound, with the human condition, with creativity, and what drives people to create and to live. It is a film bathed in light, exquisitely made, innately humanist, and among the very best films that Mike Leigh, this master director, has ever made

Rating: Must See

Mr Turner is available to stream via AppleTV, and on DVD and BluRay from ‎ Universal Pictures. It is also currently available via MAX, and on DVD and BluRay from ‎ Universal Pictures in the US.

Next week, and indeed, next month, we consider the world of animation, beginning with Dreamworks' best film in years, the action-adventure yarn that is Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.

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