Mr. Turner

Mr. Turner
Theatrical film poster
Directed by	Mike Leigh
Produced by	Georgina Lowe
Written by	Mike Leigh
Starring	Timothy Spall Dorothy Atkinson Marion Bailey Paul Jesson Lesley Manville Martin Savage
Music by	Gary Yershon
Cinematography	Dick Pope
Edited by	Jon Gregory
Production company	Film4 Focus Features International Lipsync Productions Thin Man Films Xofa Productions
Distributed by	Entertainment One[1]
Release date	15 May 2014 (2014-05-15) (Cannes)[2] 31 October 2014 (2014-10-31) (United Kingdom)
Running time	150 minutes[3]
Country	United Kingdom France Germany
Language	English
Budget	£8.4 million[4]
Box office	$17.8 million[5]

Mr. Turner is a 2014 biographical drama film based around the last twenty-five years of the life and career of painter J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851). Written and directed by Mike Leigh, the film stars Timothy Spall in the title role with Dorothy Atkinson, Paul Jesson, Marion Bailey, Lesley Manville and Martin Savage. It premiered in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival,^[6] where Spall won the award for Best Actor^[7] and cinematographer Dick Pope received a special jury prize for the film's cinematography.^[8]

The film was critically acclaimed and received four nominations each at the 87th Academy Awards and 68th British Academy Film Awards.

Describing Turner as "a great artist: a radical, revolutionary painter", writer/director Leigh explained, "I felt there was scope for a film examining the tension between this very mortal, flawed individual, and the epic work, the spiritual way he had of distilling the world".^[9]

Synopsis

A look at the last quarter century of the great British painter J. M. W. Turner. Profoundly affected by the death of his esteemed father, loved by his housekeeper, Hannah Danby, whom he takes for granted and occasionally exploits sexually, he forms a close and loving relationship with a seaside landlady with whom he eventually lives incognito in Chelsea, where he dies.

Throughout all this, Turner travels, paints, stays with the country aristocracy, visits a brothel, is a popular if anarchic member of the Royal Academy of Arts, has himself strapped to the mast of a ship so that he can paint a snowstorm and is both celebrated and reviled by the public and by royalty.^[10]

Cast

Production

Mr. Turner was filmed in several locations around the UK. Although Margate wasn't actually used to represent Turner's Margate, the production visited Kent to shoot a couple of scenes. HMS Gannet in the Historic Dockyard Chatham was used in the scene where Turner has himself strapped to the mast of a sailing ship during a storm. Stangate Creek doubled as the Thames when Turner and his friends are rowed along Thames and discuss the HMS Victory, they then toast the HMS Temeraire.^[13]

Release

Mr. Turner had its premiere at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival,^[14] where it competed for the Palme d'Or, with Timothy Spall winning the Best Actor award and cinematographer Dick Pope winning the Vulcan Award. Entertainment One released the film in the United Kingdom on 31 October 2014. Sony Pictures Classics handled the United States distribution, with a release date of 19 December 2014. It was screened in the Special Presentations section of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.^[15]

Piracy

The film was leaked by the hacker group "Guardians of Peace" onto peer-to-peer file sharing websites on 27 November, more than three weeks ahead of its intended theatrical release, as part of the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack. Along with it came Fury and three other at-the-time unreleased Sony Pictures films (Annie, Still Alice and To Write Love on Her Arms).^[16] Within three days of the initial leak, Mr. Turner had been downloaded by an estimated 63,379 unique IPs.^[16]

Critical reception

Mr. Turner received wide praise from critics. The performance of Timothy Spall was lauded, along with Gary Yershon's film score and Dick Pope's cinematography. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a "Certified Fresh" rating of 97%, based on 183 reviews, with an average score of 8.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Led by a masterful performance from Timothy Spall and brilliantly directed by Mike Leigh, Mr. Turner is a superior Hollywood biopic."^[17] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 94 out of 100 based on 44 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".^[18]

Critic Katie Kilkenny in The Atlantic called it "a gorgeous, important film".^[19] Observer critic Mark Kermode described the film as a "portrait of a man wrestling light with his hands as if it were a physical element: tangible, malleable, corporeal".^[20] Slate reviewer Dana Stevens wrote, "Writing about Mr. Turner a few weeks after seeing it, I feel a craving to be again immersed in its world, which is rich with colors, textures, and, it sometimes almost seems, smells".^[21]

The consonance between the film and its subject was addressed by Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Galleries in England: “Mike Leigh and Timothy Spall’s great achievement is showing us how the artist approached the physical business of painting. But they also convey the spirit of a man whose reputation as a curmudgeon is unwarranted, given his passionate interest in people and the world around him. There is a great humanitarian streak in Turner and Mike Leigh has found a way of capturing this on film, as he has done so often before.”^[22] Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, stating that similar to the director's 1999 film Topsy-Turvy, about the creation of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Mikado, "[Mr. Turner] understands creative people on every conceivable level, and translates that understanding with a deftness rarely seen outside of astute documentaries about creative people. To watch it is to feel as though you're a part of its world... experiencing tiny fluctuations in received wisdom and sudden changes of artistic direction that can only be sensed by professionals who are plugged into their art form, and completely in command of their talents."^[23]

Accolades

References

External links

• Sony Pictures Classics official site
• Mr. Turner on IMDb
• Mr. Turner at AllMovie
• Mr. Turner at Box Office Mojo
• Mr. Turner at Metacritic
• Mr. Turner at Rotten Tomatoes