Director: Mike Leigh
Year Released: 2014
Rating: 3.0
Leigh covers the last years of the great British artist Joseph Mallord William Turner's life (Timothy Spall), examining incrementally his obsession with the ocean (and the sun!), his views on art (photography: blah) and his disconnected personal/emotional life. Though Leigh's methodical style does make this a bit plodding in nature, Spall's grunting, uncouth but timelessly creative boar adds a sort of balance to the proceedings - he seems to live in an Artistic Dreamworld where actual human feelings (note how he seems unaffected by the deceased girl washed up, scribbling away in his sketchbook) can only be translated onto the canvas. Leigh's attention to detail - like Turner's - comes through in many of the scenes (shaving the pig's head/ shaving Turner's face) and contribute to the character study: note Turner's reaction to a play mocking him, Turner's listening to patrons viewing his art, Turner's introduction to the photographic medium and, in one of the most heartbreaking scenes, Turner's breaking down while sketching a prostitute (his beloved father had recently passed away). Special mention needs to be made for Dick Pope's glorious cinematography: if you're going to film the life of an extraordinary visualist, it better look the part.
