Mr. Turner

We follow Turner through incidents in his life like characters in Leigh's other films, the film more interested in the timbre of individual moments than how they all fit together. It's an unusual feel for a biopic but I love Leigh's approach to performance and dialogue so it works very well. Dick Pope's photography is astonishingly beautiful and Spall's performance is unorthodox (I don't know if I've ever seen a biopic that treats the person so unromantically) but excellent.

Imagine watching Turner (portrayed excellently by Spall) put the finishing touches on one of his beautiful and masterful seascapes and being able to just gaze upon its majesty as it came into its final form. Yes, imagine watching paint dry.

I feel like this is slightly more radical than it's letting on, and may only be really appreciated years from now.

Hrrrrggh. Mmmuuuhhhrggh. Hhhhrrrrrggghhhh. Hmmmmrrrrrgguuuf... Grrrrkkk. Huuufffrrrggg.

Mike Leigh's biopic on the life of J.M.W. Turner focuses on the later years of the painter's life. It's a funny, entertaining movie, albeit lengthy and plodding at times. Timothy Spall gives the best performance of his career, with subtle acting that doesn't draw attention to itself. What stands out the most to me is the beautiful cinematography by Mike Leigh's regular DP Dick Pope. The film looks like a painting itself, and I constantly found my jaw dropping at the beauty of the images.

Beautifully filmed,Spall is fantastic.

Who is an artist? Mr. Turner... or Mr. Leigh?

Turner was a brilliant painter--arguably the best Romantic painter along with Casper David Friedrich--but this film offers little insight into his motivations or his creative process. The problem is simple: Leigh and Spall are content to provide endless variations on a simple dichotomy established early on--that Turner was a gruff, boorish, cantankerous man with a refined aesthetic sensibility--and assume it's enough to sustain a 150 minute film. They were wrong.

Very chill portrayal of a peculiar individual.

Biopics can often come out as somewhat flat in their attempt to boil down a persons life into a two hour coherent narrative. That is most definitely not the case here, since Leigh firstly seem more interested in exposing the people, society and zeitguist surrounding Turner, than explaining the painter's inner workings, and secondly expects his viewers to be somewhat educated in the subject. A refreshingly demanding view.

A beautiful, moving character study, anchored by two and a half of Timothy Spall's finest screen hours. Yet it couldn't quite transcend my limited interest in the subject of the film; art history has never been my wheelhouse, and ultimately I found myself appreciating the film's merits more than genuinely enjoying it. Plenty to marvel at here, it's a heck of an accomplishment; but I suspect others would get more out of it than me; it's not challenging my personal Mike Leigh top five.

Sr. Turner estreava há 10 anos no Festival do Rio de Janeiro. Eu só queria saber quem votou na cinematografia de Birdman no Oscar quando tinha o filme do Leigh concorrendo. Sério, isso aqui é nível Barry Lyndon. Deslumbrante. YTS.

Spall delivers a hall of fame putters and murmurs performance. That aside, this is most definitely not my cup of tea. Between this and Ferrari, I need to go a couple of years without watching a biopic. Cleanse the palate.

What a horrible piece of shit! When will filmmakers realize that movies about artists are boring? Literally like watching paint dry. Mike Leigh is a mediocre director at best. He's made some pretty shitty films like Hight Hopes, Secrets and Lies, and Naked. This ranks up there with that shit.

Meandering and depressing, but very well shot and acted.

It goes without saying that the cinematography is stunning. Otherwise, my first crack at a Leigh film left me feeling a little cold, but I agreed with the common sentiment about the film that the viewer still left with a sense of a very deep understanding of J.M.W. The combination of those two feelings was pretty strange but not unpleasant; but then again a film leaving a "cold" impression is in most cases a negative for me.

leigh theme party of compassion and understanding

82.50+.50 = 83.00.

Mike Leighs neuer Film ist einer, der es einem schwer macht: Langsam, ziemlich grimmig, nicht leicht zu lieben. Sicherlich, der Film ist faszinierend, toll gespielt und seine Bilder hervorragend der Kunst des Originals nachempfunden!(...) die ganze Rezension und die für uns faszinierendsten Biopics über Kunst gibts auf unserer Videotheken Internetseite cinegeek.de

Watched this with my dad who is an artist too :) Haha he said the whole spitting parts were a little exaggerated as you'd probably ruin the painting :D. Anyway, cool movie and truthfully I like his paintings! Saw some of them in New York too :) Cool movie about the life of Mr. Turner.

Disjointed scenes from the life of a painter I never heard of before this film. Turner's life wasn't very interesting - he wasn't poor, there's no struggle in the film. Acting and persona of Timothy Spall saves it for me. Cinematography is beautiful; once the movie caught me - I wasn't sure if I'm seeing a painting or a long shot of country-side. It would have worked better for me as a mini-series, two and a half hours is way too much to watch in one sitting.

Stunning cinematography and excellent acting. In this peculiar case that was all it took to capture my attention.

Pretty to look at, to be sure, but I never warmed to Turner's rather gruff painter. This despite the fact that Leigh does seem to take pains to bring moments of levity to Turner's story. Further, I just couldn't get a sense of what Leigh was doing overall--the film struck me as episodic and a bit aimless. And yet, the end seemed to presume that some grand conclusion or lesson was there--I missed the boat on this one.

The details are handled masterfully here, but this is a slow-cooked effort demanding and rewarding patience. Sadly, the rewards may seem on the meagre side unless one likes pictures. It quietly captures in two hours the social change experienced by Britain during Turner's lifetime.

brilliant cinematography, some fine acting, but overall a noncoherent collage of scenes...

Nope.

It's good. Well acted, a good period story. Turner's work is nice too. So very long, too long.

Gorgeous to look at and refreshingly toned down for a biopic. I wish one side-character's relation to the painter was expanded upon and the grunts of the main character draw too much attention to itself.

The later life of the landscape painter J.M.W. Turner, with a focus on the art world of his day and on his rather disturbing private life. There are striking moments, many courtesy of Dick Pope's cinematography and the careful recreation of the 19th century, but at 150 minutes it feels overstretched and shapeless, and Timothy Spall gives a fine performance of a rather thinly conceived portrait. The supporting cast is solid. Some may find the depictions of Victorian misogyny quite disturbing.

Timothy Sail for lead and Dick Pope for cinematography did a tremendously good work in this unnecessarily long biopic.

This isn't exactly a movie that invites you with open arms. Its world is cold and harsh, and its inhabitants are closed, constantly struggling, and often pretentious. Uninviting as it may be, it's also intriguing as hell, both as a character study and a depiction of the time period he lived in. Visually, this movie reminds of Barry Lyndon, with long flowing takes and majestic wide shots that could be mistaken for paintings. Overall a brooding, dark and highly interesting biopic.

"Mr. Turner" may have a larger scope than your average Leigh film, but only superficially: in the end, it's just a staple of those small, extremely insignificant, extremely human fragments that compose every single one of his endeavors. And, again, like any Leigh film, it's a grower -you have to wait until the end (or, at least, around the middle) for the spell of the film (and the film's performances, all spendid) to settle. But when it does, it's quite a beauty.

Beautifully executed but exceptionally slow.

Impeccable indeed.

Mr. Turner is ostensibly about Britain's greatest painter but judging from Spall's interpretation, one would be forgiven for thinking that J.M.W. was a touch Phlegmish.

No real plot, some pretty scenery and paintings, decent acting but absolutely no reason to be 2hr30 rather than 1hr30.

Absurdly pretty. Not much happens but the performances are great and it's just nice to spend time with this oafish man.

Mr. Turner is a strong biopic that you already pretty much know whether or not you're going to like it. It's long, it's slow, it takes place in the 1800s, it's about a single man who is performed wonderfully by Timothy Spall. If that sounds like something you'd like, then you probably will. If it sounds like a plodding and meandering movie that doesn't interest you, then the two and a half hours it takes to play aren't going to convince you otherwise.

The life of an illustrious, contentious painter gets a less than controversial treatment from a usually reliable director. Dick Pope's photography impresses with a handful of exquisite, painterly compositions and the ever grumbling Spall gives us his best 'Jabba The Hutt meets a British curmudgeon' interpretation, yet the film didn't exactly leave me with a lasting impression nor a heightened appreciation for the man's work. A respectable effort, nothing more, nothing less.

Timothy Spall gives a finely tuned performance in a film that explores the nuance of nature in its quiet beauties and subtle cruelties. Dick Pope's cinematography is incredible.

As biopics go this is one of the best. Spall is excellent, and Leigh has gone above and beyond in terms of visual appeal.

A very good film I'd eagerly recommend, even if it does feel rather confused as to what exactly it's aiming for, making certain isolated scenes feel great on their own, but don't add to the entire piece. Spall is terrific in this role, he entirely encompasses the character. Mr Turner's works sure did look good, but Dick Pope gives him a run for his money here, his appropriately painterly cinematography is masterful.

Great cinematography, brilliant characters and some warm and humongous individual scenes, but as a whole it is slightly dull.

there is an esthetic asceticism about this movie, it imitates mr. turner's humble love for nature and art by focusing on the seemingly unimportant moments in his life which can sometimes offer enormous beauties. unlike today's "mass culture" aesthetics people were seeking divine qualities form a beautiful object, just like turner's last wife whom he takes to be an aphrodite which may seem for the people of 21st century absurd at best.