murrap The Bad Either I am watching an attempt at an accurate biographical account or I am not. Leigh inventing a story line that traduces Turner's character because it "felt right" is an important step too far. Not that he appears to have been a saint. Turner was sacrificed for Leigh's craft. It also did not tell a tale, more a series of barely related events, which themselves were not followed up eg. Haydon. Turner's father looked in some ways younger than Turner with more of a twinkle in his eye, so a very questionable portrayal. I also could not hear what was being said at the beginning of the film; maybe this was intentional but let's have a few subtitles to poke fun at this stupidity. The Good. Beautifully shot and great atmosphere.

lebewohll-78626 As Mr Leigh has attempted to promote a cultural and economic boycott, I believe that behavior is appropriate for would-be viewers of his work. Mr Leigh's blatant anti-semitic rants and behavior obviouslyundercut his work. I must pass on patronizing the work of a Nazi bastard. From the look of things, most of the UK is rapidly becoming more accommodating to this nastiness. It won't help their cultural exports nor much else from the UK. If Mr Leigh loves the bloody Muslims so much, why doesn't he move to a Muslim 3rd-world country, and then try there to express his thoughts, and try to get his movies produced there?

SnoopyStyle It's the first half of the 19th century. Mr. Turner (Timothy Spall) is a grumpy respected painter in the Royal Academy of Arts. His newest unconventional style causes controversy. His beloved elderly father dies. His children's mother hates him. His housekeeper Hannah Danby is his sometimes sexual outlet. He rents a seaside room and has an affair with his landlady Sophia Booth after her husband's death. His many friends include scientist Mary Somerville, rare for her times, and bitter failing painter Haydon.This is not a plot driven movie. It takes a couple of hours before the drama starts to pick up. This is very much about Spall's immersive performance. The character doesn't really change. After 15 minutes, one gets the full sense of his personality. The movie is generally slow with a few explosive scenes. The exhibition scene with the many Academy artists paint a complete picture of Turner and his place among his peers. This is a brilliant performance looking for a more intense plot.

James In this film, Mike Leigh is telling us that, while doubtless "beautiful inside", not all artists are gorgeous physically, and not all of them have (or are surrounded by) either beauty or particularly high standards of behaviour. As the years pass, we their admirers have turned these people into saints or gods that they never were nor could have been. The Director tends to push (at times even flog?) this idea to its limits, and perhaps beyond them, given that real-life depictions of the young Turner suggest a moderately good-looking man (in the film we see the middle-aged version onwards - Turner's quite impressive dates were 1775-1851). In some sense, then, we are back with the portrayal of Mozart by Tom Hulce in "Amadeus". However, "Mr Turner" lacks the dramatic sub-plots of the latter film, and the man of the title is not given to buffoonery. In general, our hero is far more down-to-earth, even if his paintings may conceivably be greater (and more revolutionary) works than even Mozart's music. What this film does have is very interesting handling of the title role by Timothy Spall, plus numerous snippets of real history. Hence JMW Turner here is a more-nuanced character, being a bit crude and lusty, for example, but also very hardworking, basically kind and charitable, knowledgeable of the world, and extremely fond of his supportive father (a former barber skilled at his trade and able to make some money, as is his son, but trapped irrevocably in the lower classes). Turner the son, on the other hand, bridges some of the class divisions through his "push", worldly-wisdom and of course sheer brilliance, as well as his relative wealth and his fundamentally amenable - if gruff/brusque - nature. How much of this positive side to the film is the real history and how much Spall's portrayal is a little (nicely) hard to determine, but it seems the "facts" of history are stuck to fairly closely, and (what one imagines is) a SUPERB job is done of portraying the increasingly-assertive, full-of-achievement/talent, but also rough-and-ready Britain of those times, warts and all. One can enjoy (and even be moved by) scenes during which Turner comes into contact with other figures from his day who have gone on to become (as) legendary for their influence on British and world art, and indeed history in general (John Ruskin, 1819-1900, might be a classic example, and of course there is also a brief encounter with John Constable, 1776-1837). There are moments in the film when Turner's greatest paintings (notably "The Fighting Temeraire" (1838) and "Rain, Steam and Speed" (1844)) are anticipated directly, but there are also a number of shots in the film (notably of people at doorways looking out to the sea) in which Mike Leigh seems to have turned the film stock into canvas, and there is still enormous beauty in the midst of all that dirt and disease and lack of hygiene. All credit to him for that, and for giving us such an accurate and fascinating - if not always appealing - insight into the Britain of the years 1820-1851.