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| A typically gorgeous and revealing Mr. Turner tableau (Sony Pictures Classics) |
How
does an artist see the world?
In
Mike Leigh’s sprawling and triumphant Mr.
Turner, the answer is as ambiguous as it is essential, as specific as it is
universal. Starring Leigh’s frequent collaborator Timothy Spall as the famed
British painter J.M.W. Turner, the film ranks among the best of the year and among Leigh’s most accomplished works. It ambitiously delves into the life and
predicament of the artist, with an intent and perspective of irregular
intelligence and extraordinary execution.
The
exceptionality of a Mike Leigh film is multi-faceted yet easily distinguishable. His
characters are so uncommon to the cinematic landscape – Sally Hawkins’
perennial optimist in Happy-Go-Lucky,
or Leslie Manville’s exuberantly unfulfilled domestic in Another Year – that there’s a through-line instantaneously
identified as his films begin. Here, Turner communicates in grunts and scowls,
with the occasional smile or bellowing laugh. One might call him grotesque, or
dub him a “gargoyle” as he does himself, but one thing’s for sure – you don’t
see a character like this very often. As Birdman
and Listen Up Philip have done to
lesser results this year, Mr. Turner identifies
an artist at odds with his work and rebelling against societal conventions.
Unlike those two, Leigh’s scope is bigger with a less-rigid thematic purpose –
spanning decades in the man’s life, he seeks to get at much bigger
questions about that “creative” impulse.
Leigh’s
work is so passionate here – at times, Mr.
Turner is a furious and condemning piece of storytelling, shrewdly
attacking those that approach artistic expressions with intellectual pretension
and a disregard for history – even as he remains a committed humanist. British
period film is a notoriously stuffy genre, in which filmmakers and television
creators seem content with elaborate costumes and soapy narrative. Leigh is the
exact opposite. He revels in the way people speak and communicate across time
and cultures, and his scripts effortlessly conflate his own personality with
unwavering realism. His imprint is unmistakable – only Leigh would so
enthusiastically jump at the chance to craft a film around a man that literally
answers questions with grunts and moans.
The
story-beats are light and flexible, as Mr.
Turner is threaded less by an overarching structure than a collection of indelible
moments. If there’s one pattern to identify, the movie frequently contrasts a
man of vile selfishness with one harboring deep affinity for life’s natural
beauties and peculiarities. Early in the film, we learn Turner has utterly
abandoned his two daughters and their mother, for which he appears to lack any
sort of regret – and yet in the subsequent scene, he stands beside a piano
player in a hall of paintings, hit with a wall of emotion as he listens to her
music, sings along softly, holding back a well of tears. Turner, or at least
the version Leigh puts on screen, is an apathetic for the way he disregards
mores both important and pointless, but practically transforms when confronted
with breathtaking landscapes, or a moving piece of music, or a person of
perceived integrity. This is not a person that fetishizes tragedy and sorrow
for the sake of his work. When a troubled fellow artist visits him and
describes a building desire to burn down his home – family included – to rid
all of his misery, he eventually muses that the idea makes for a probing piece
of art. Turner responds with a – wait for it – grunt of utter dismissiveness.
For
Turner, and perhaps for Leigh, art is taken in the calmness of the water, the brightness
of the sun rising, the ever-changing shape and potency of the clouds in the
sky. Despite the visually rigorous approaches taken by films such as Birdman or The Grand Budapest Hotel, no cinematic look blew me away to the
extent that Mr. Turner’s did. Leigh
fashions every frame as Turner sees it. Along with cinematographer Dick Pope,
the film unfolds in a sequence of masterpieces, from the depth and detailing of
the images to the narrative action so still and yet so communicative. The
camera will stay fixed, and gently flow into another room, or from the inside
to the outside, or up the stairs of a grand hall. Nature’s breathtaking
grandeur is perpetually instilled in the template, but Leigh’s camera captures
a million little details at once: people moving, arguing, smirking, laughing,
or hiding, all in frame. The visuals flow so handsomely and so beautifully, and
though they can seem inconsequential – as when Mr. Turner looks out at the sea
for a great length of time, with a couple whisper-arguing beside him, and Leigh just holds the camera – they richly illuminate Turner’s
eyes and soul, and identify the humanity within triviality.
Mr. Turner
is long. Time is spent with the artist as he takes up with a bed-and-breakfast
owner (played wonderfully by Marion Bailey) in Margate Beach, and a
considerable amount of the action concerns his relationships with fellow
artists, art lovers and art critics. Eventually, so the story goes, a backlash
sets in against Turner’s impressionistic landscapes, as popular opinion finds
them increasingly vile and coarse. It’s a surprising shift that, as a viewer,
is initially difficult to comprehend. Turner is still taking in the world the
same way, conveying what he sees and how he interprets it. The man is
fascinated with science, with “how things work” – Leigh frequenter Manville
drops by as a philosopher/scientist that gives Turner an introductory lesson in
magnetism – and dynamically contends with his understanding of the way of the
world. He blotches and spits on his paintings, treating them as living,
breathing, ever-evolving creatures – but in so doing, he ably visualizes
violence and fear, or intimacy and calm, in a way where it can be felt.
Leigh is able to express this with such exacting technique; directors try and
fail to capture the spirit of an artist’s work so often that Mr. Turner’s sublime evocation of its
artist’s worldview is reason enough to applaud it. But Turner scoffs at
intellectualism and deliberateness – as the film wears on, there’s a forceful
debunking of the myths of artistry that closely echo Turner’s own building
frustrations.
Even
at two and a half hours, Mr. Turner
is a marvelous experience. Watching Turner create within such a
visually-arresting cinematic image is enthralling; observing his intimate
encounters with his eventual wife, or his tragically-distant behavior with his
former mistress (Dorothy Atkinson) and estranged children, is profoundly
revealing; and listening to characters obsess over paintings through Leigh’s
sarcastic lens is joyous and relieving. Mr.
Turner so avoids the “seriousness” of stiff biopics, instead opting for a
grandly humane character study that depicts art and its creation with unbridled
affection and without typical pretension. It’s as if Leigh is making a comment
about his own work; his films indicate such a bizarre and idiosyncratic perspective,
that to draw a connective line between him and Turner would hardly be
inaccurate. But to go back the cinematography for a moment: even as the story
plods along at speeds less than bristling, every image is so revealing, of such
depth and precision, that Mr. Turner
pulls off what feels like a magic trick. Changes in the complexion and mood of
these shots dictate the story’s progression in tone and theme. When Turner is
in love, Pope presents two-person portraits of soft eyes and quivering smiles.
When he’s in need of a little humanity, he’s rendered a mere dot in nature, as
when located in a calm lake with enormous trees violently curling in around
him. And in one of his final moments of life, he races – or, rather, limps –
outside to sketch a scene, a moment. It’s a last chance for him to, in his own
way, see and contend with the world.
Artistry
is of such principal interest to filmmakers – to say that Leigh has depicted it
in a way more complex, genuine and humane than I’ve ever really seen is beyond
complimentary. And Spall’s performance is at once the most unusual and the most
engaging interpretation of “the artist” that I’ve witnessed in quite some time.
Leigh tasks him to run the gamut of emotions – he’s in mourning, he’s
regretful, he’s sarcastic, he’s grumpy, he’s bored, he’s foul – and Spall
delivers. He takes a holistic approach, incorporating all of these qualities
into an expression of selfishness, of self-awareness, and of profound oddity.
His Turner is a sympathetic character, even if his occasional nastiness is not
at all excused, and ultimately identifies and digs into the idea that the
greatest beauty can be mined from a most unexpected source. That’s the central
tension of Mr. Turner – much as Leigh
seems to admire Turner’s actual masterpieces, it’s the integrity and honesty
with which he sees and communicates that is his point of contemplation and
respect.
I
watched Mr. Turner, eyes opened wide
and heart sufficiently touched, and wondered why exactly Leigh hasn’t been a focal point
of the conversation this year. Mr. Turner
is a big, beautiful and enlightening tableau – and Leigh’s penchant for humor,
profundity and strangeness is on-display more than ever. Moved as I was by Mr. Turner throughout, it left me in awe
upon ending. After a string of final images that range from hopeful to
despairing, its power finally emerges. Mr.
Turner isn’t a masterpiece – it’s a series of masterpieces, evocatively and
densely exposing the relationship between the artist and all that’s beyond
him.
Grade: A