Mr. Turner

The film depicts the last quarter-century of the British painter J. M. W. Turner's life. Profoundly affected by the death of his father, loved by his housekeeper, Hannah Danby, whom he takes for granted and occasionally uses sexually, he forms a close and loving relationship with a seaside landlady, Mrs. Booth, with whom he eventually lives incognito in Chelsea, where he dies.

Turner travels, paints, stays with the country aristocracy, visits a brothel, is a popular if anarchic member of the Royal Academy of Arts, has himself strapped to the mast of a ship so that he can paint a snowstorm, and is both celebrated and reviled by the public and by royalty.^[9]

The story recreates the memorable occasion during the Royal Academy salon of 1832 when Turner's seascape Helvoetsluys was placed next to Constable's The Opening of Waterloo Bridge seen from Whitehall. Seeing how the muted tones of his own painting paled next to Constable's vibrant work, in a quick stroke Turner adds a smear of red paint representing a buoy. Recognising Turner's genius, Constable says, "He's been here and fired a gun."

The original screenplay was written by Mike Leigh with research by historian Jacqueline Riding. Mr. Turner was filmed in several locations around the UK. Margate was not used to represent Turner's Margate, which was filmed at Kingsand in Cornwall. The production visited Kent to shoot a couple of scenes. Wentworth Woodhouse in Rotherham stood in for the Royal Academy in London, with the production crew meticulously recreating the way the paintings of the era were displayed. HMS Gannet in the Historic Dockyard Chatham was used in the scene where Turner has himself strapped to the mast of a sailing ship during a storm. Stangate Creek doubled as the Thames when Turner and his friends are rowed along the Thames and discuss HMS Victory, then toast HMS Temeraire.^[12]

Mr. Turner had its premiere at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival,^[13] where it competed for the Palme d'Or, with Spall winning Best Actor and Dick Pope winning the Vulcan Award. Entertainment One released the film in the United Kingdom on 31 December 2014. Sony Pictures Classics handled the United States distribution, with a release date of 19 December 2014. It was screened in the Special Presentations section of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.^[14]

The film was leaked by the hacker group "Guardians of Peace" onto peer-to-peer file-sharing websites on 27 November 2014, more than three weeks ahead of its intended U.S. theatrical release, as part of the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack. Along with it came Fury and three other then unreleased Sony Pictures films (Annie, Still Alice and To Write Love on Her Arms).^[15] Within three days of the initial leak, an estimated 63,379 unique IPs had downloaded Mr. Turner.^[15]

Mr. Turner received praise from critics. Spall's performance was lauded, along with Yershon's score and Pope's cinematography. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 97%, based on 196 reviews, with an average score of 8.40/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Led by a masterful performance from Timothy Spall and brilliantly directed by Mike Leigh, Mr. Turner is a superior Hollywood biopic."^[16] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 94 out of 100 based on 44 critics.^[17]

Critic Katie Kilkenny of The Atlantic called it "a gorgeous, important film".^[18] Observer critic Mark Kermode described the film as a "portrait of a man wrestling light with his hands as if it were a physical element: tangible, malleable, corporeal".^[19] Slate reviewer Dana Stevens wrote, "Writing about Mr. Turner a few weeks after seeing it, I feel a craving to be again immersed in its world, which is rich with colors, textures, and, it sometimes almost seems, smells".^[20]

The consonance between the film and its subject was addressed by Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Galleries in England: “Mike Leigh and Timothy Spall’s great achievement is showing us how the artist approached the physical business of painting. But they also convey the spirit of a man whose reputation as a curmudgeon is unwarranted, given his passionate interest in people and the world around him. There is a great humanitarian streak in Turner and Mike Leigh has found a way of capturing this on film, as he has done so often before.”^[21]

Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave the film three and a half out of four, writing that like Leigh's 1999 film Topsy-Turvy, about the creation of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Mikado, "[Mr. Turner] understands creative people on every conceivable level, and translates that understanding with a deftness rarely seen outside of astute documentaries about creative people. To watch it is to feel as though you're a part of its world... experiencing tiny fluctuations in received wisdom and sudden changes of artistic direction that can only be sensed by professionals who are plugged into their art form, and completely in command of their talents."^[22]

• Official Website
• Mr. Turner at IMDb
• Mr. Turner at AllMovie
• Mr. Turner at Metacritic  
• Mr. Turner at Box Office Mojo
• Mr. Turner at Rotten Tomatoes