Mr. Turner

2014
6.8| 2h30m| R| en| More Info
Released: 19 December 2014 Released
Producted By: France 3 Cinéma
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

Eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner lives his last 25 years with gusto and secretly becomes involved with a seaside landlady, while his faithful housekeeper bears an unrequited love for him.

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Reviews

GamerTab That was an excellent one.
Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.
AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.
joanna-89 Mr Turner is beautiful quiet contemplative sensual moving. Timothy Spall becomes Turner before your eyes. Guessing that many negative reviewers felt the movie was too slow or that it was hard to watch the depiction of such a complicated human being. That's why I liked it. Slow and deliberate like the process of a painting.
Katoo A day after watching the movie, I am still not certain about the way I feel about it, hence the 5/10. Mr Turner is a beautiful film to look at: the cinematography, the framing of the images, the colours, the are all extremely well done. I was only let down by the cardboard houses and harbour at Margate, that was like looking at a cheap operadécor. Everything actually filmed on location looks marvellous and romantic. The atmosphere in the Victorian Houses and at the Academy are also captured very well.I don't know if it was intentionally meant by the director/producer, but never could I sympathize with the Turner character. He's rude, sometimes a pervert, but mostly grumpy and boorish. If those were indeed the main characteristics of Turner, then Spall did a great job. However, it was very hard to unsee Spall's Peter Pettigrew (Harry Potter) and I find he even uses some of the same eccentric actingtrics in this movie. He huffs, puffs and groans throughout the movie, I found it very tiresome. Neither could I see the attraction Mrs Booth had to have to this grumpy old man. There were too few scenes in the movie to justify their apparently loving relationship.But Turner is a movie about a painter! I was so disappointed that only 10% of the time you can actually see him paint. I read Spall took art classes for 2 years, but that was waste of time and money, because you can hardly see hem hold a brush, let alone actually paint. The movie never reveals his reasons for painting, his convictions nor his passions. I don't understand his relationship with Haydon, Constanble nor the other painters, but he loves the camaraderie of the Academy. He seems to have contempt for the paintings of the pre-rafaellites, but it was a fact that he was a fan of their work. I was mostly disappointed by his mocking of John Ruskin - in a scene at Ruskin's house with his parents - which seemed to me totally disrespectful towards the Ruskins, who have just bought one of his paintings.The movie is a sequential series of fragments. Some of them seem out of place and unimportant. For me it made it hard to warm to it. It has not made me want to know more about Turner, which usually is a sign that the movie has not enough quality, despite the beautiful cinematography.
Leofwine_draca MR. TURNER is Mike Leigh's biopic of the famous Victorian painter, with Timothy Spall in the title role. It's a lengthy and slightly disappointing movie, mainly because it's quite good but not excellent, as I'd heard. People make out this film to be some kind of masterpiece, and while it does feel authentic and interesting, it fails to grip like other biopics. It's overlong and meandering in places, and as a director Leigh is interested in minute detail rather than the bigger picture.Put it like this: I watched the James Mason film THE DESERT FOX the day before, and as a biopic of the Nazi commander Rommel that was head and shoulders above this film. It had heart, soul, and drama, and MR. TURNER struggles with all of those. What this film does have is plenty of authenticity, bringing the 19th century to colourful and vivid life, and a surprising amount of humour that works. Spall is fine in the title role, but you get the impression that this Turner is a caricature rather than a fully-fledged and fully-rounded fellow. He has no character development and remains simply a classic British eccentric. Compare this to something like CREATION, which really attempted to get into the nitty gritty of Darwin's life and what made him tick, and MR. TURNER suffers by comparison.
magnuslhad This biopic of 19th century painter J. M. W. Turner takes an episodic approach to its subject. We meet Turner late in life, when he is successful, financially secure, happily living with his father and respected by his peers. The film refuses to define an essential character trait, or set up any kind of redemptive arc. This eschewing of tired Hollywood script tropes is admirable in itself, except that it offers up very little to replace it. Turner is contradictory in his affections; he provides generous financial support to a fellow artist and gives sage advice freely. And yet he fails to acknowledge his own daughters, declaring himself childless even in a conversation on the trials of burying one's own offspring. He seems to come alive most with his common law wife, while treating his devoted housekeeper abominably. No underlying cause for such behaviour is presented, we are merely privy to these facts as the film ponderously ticks off a check-box of known character traits. The massive redeeming feature for this film is Dick Pope's cinematography, rightfully celebrated in numerous reviews. Turner's art was cinematic before the adjective existed, and Pope exploits that to its full extent, so that the frame itself at various moments takes on a Turneresque hew. The film favours image over plot, and poetic moments over narrative cohesion, which will delight a certain niche audience. Leigh queasily refers to himself in the third person on the DVD extras, saying Turner was a "perfect subject for a Mike Leigh film." That apparently means coaxing a slightly vaudeville performance from Spall, which along with the lack of narrative drive, renders this over-long film rather boring. Lots for budding cinematographers to enjoy, but precious little for the rest of us.