A biopic of J M W Turner, starring a host of British talent, directed by our own Mike Leigh? Should be beautiful, elegant, insightful, moving, fun, adventurous.....It is none of the above and a fair bit less. Now, one could argue that a lack of interest in the subject matter will taint your view of a work such as this, but this argument simply does not hold. I saw 'The King's Speech' knowing very little about King George or his issues, and it is fair to say I am hardly a Royalist, but I walked out of that film moved and educated. 'The King's Speech' is also full of a lot of fun, an element in which 'Mr Turner' is supposed to be steeped; I hasten to argue that the 150 minute slog is, aside from a couple of moments of brevity, quite far removed from fun. This would not be such an issue if it WAS anything else, but it is not.
For a biopic, it is extremely sparse on bio; we learn very little about the man's work and we do not get inside his head or heart whatsoever. We are as a bemused onlooker, trying to fathom what it is exactly we should be caring about. Mr. Turner may have been a difficult persona, not well liked, perhaps, and indeed an audience do not have to LIKE the central character of such a story; they do, however, have to feel they know or care about them one way or another.
Leigh is famed for his working with actors on an improvisational level a lot of the time. Whilst I acknowledge that good things can come out of this technique, it must be called into question when it clearly results in something as rambling and messy as 'Mr. Turner'; the film almost literally has no real direction to speak of. There is no questioning the handsome mounting of the film; many a frame is itself quite a painting. Nor is there ANY question as to the zest with which the cast throw themselves into their performances. Lead by an Oscar courting Timothy Spall (who spent two years learning to paint for no reason that is obvious in the final product), everybody does exactly what is required of them. Any review of this film should certainly praise the turn of Dorothy Atkinson, most notable for her British television work, who rather astonishingly steals the frame every time she is in it (yes, even from Spall); this is all the more impressive when you consider she is given almost nothing to do except look forlorn and increasingly sick. Of course, with an almost complete lack of context or narrative flow, many moments which should carry dramatic or emotional weight simply come off as, at best empty, and at worst, as in at least one example, a little bizarre! Why? The answers are numerous: The screenplay seems as uninterested in what is going on as we become, the film appears to have been cut by somebody drunk on sleep who forgot how to edit, and the score doesn't belong to the film for which it was composed.
There is a scene in which Turner's audience make heartless, thoughtless comments about how the artist is going blind and has lost his touch; whilst I am not heartless, I did find myself thinking this echoed my feeling about Mr Leigh. I can foresee a few award nominations here, not least because the Academy do like a good English epic, but aside from cinematography and notable performances, they won't have been earned, and any critic saying as much probably dropped off during the screening and is now covering their own arse. In summary, a disappointing mess of a film, which probably tests even the patience of those with vested interest in the topic.
