Director: Mike Leigh
Starring: Timothy Spall
The first thing that strikes you about Mr. Turner, the latest from writer/director Mike Leigh, is how painterly it looks. This isn't merely a film which boasts a superficial beauty; it's a film which has a texture that you can almost reach out and touch and images which leave you feeling as if you can see the brush strokes. Leigh's films tend to be best known for the uncompromising precision with which his characters are drawn and brought into relief, but with Mr. Turner he's made a film where the image itself doesn't just blend in as background but announces itself and pushes its way to the foreground, the world of the film depicted in such a vibrant, artful way that it speaks deeply to how the protagonist, painter J.M.W. Turner, sees and renders the world in his own work. Yet, despite all the care and attention paid to getting the look right, Leigh hasn't sacrificed any of that character work that so defines his pictures and in Mr. Turner has created an uncommonly intelligent and elegant biopic that avoids the pitfalls that cripple many examples of the genre by maintaining his focus on the man at the center, getting to know him in all his complexity rather than reduce him to a series of facts.
