Review of Mr. Turner (2014) by Lasttimeisaw — 11 Mar 2015

Mike Leigh’s newest endeavour is a two-and-a-half hours long biographic film about British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), a watercolour landscape painting maestro, the film chronically narrates the last quarter of Turner’s life, stars Leigh’s longtime teammate Timothy Spall in an once-in-a-blue-moon leading role which won him BEST ACTOR in Cannes last year.

Unequivocally this film is second to none if it can be crowned as the most beautiful film of 2014, artistically enthralling thanks to the utterly breathtaking cinematography of DP Dick Pope, which concisely tallies with Turner’s own persistent study on light and colour, and viewers can get a peek of his relentless thirst from the magnet experiment conducted by Ms. Somerville (a brilliant cameo by Lesley Manville), or later his piqued interest of the daguerreotype technique, mocks every painter would take a camera with him; also his valour as a true artist, dares a face-to-face encounter with a rough tempest on the sea, just to observe its colour. And the most memorable one is when Leigh and Spall re-enact the action of Turner purposefully adding a wanton brush of red on his own work, instead of blemishing a masterpiece, he turns it into a wonder by his master stroke which stuns all his fellow artists in the academy.