A Discussion With Timothy Spall And Mike Leigh On Mr. Turner
Mr. Turner is one of the better biopics in recent years. It’s cast from the steady hand of English writer-director Mike Leigh, who covers the last 25 years of the life of J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), one of the great late-Romantic english painters, and does so in a way that it does not unfold in a predictable checklist of accomplishments, but understated moments that reveal the man’s regrets, fascinations, and stubborn detachment from public opinion and contemporary views of aesthetics. Themes like beauty, decay, life, and death grow organically out of the story- earthy like Turner’s own commanding works- and we feel like a story is naturally unfolding instead of a narrative that’s trying to contrive appreciation for a particular figure.
