Review of Mr. Turner (2014) by Eric H — 02 Dec 2014

Mr Turner feels less a movie and more a series of beautifully crafted paintings. Each stunningly framed, the cinematography dialled to perfection with colour and light giving us an idea of how Turner himself would have viewed the world. This is a stunning rendition of the life of an artist, very much through the eyes of the artist.

Mr. Turner is a film that I appreciate and I'm glad I saw it, but I can't say that I necessarily enjoyed it, which is disappointing. All the more because the film is brilliant in many ways, from the astonishing cinematography by Dick Pope to the Costumes and Set- Design which will probably be nominated for Academy Awards. On the race for best actor is Timothy Spall who's marvelous in movie, this is at awards level no doubt about, I can see why it took the prize at Cannes. His grunts say more than one thousand words, unbelievable how he was able to create such a unique persona on screen. Mike Leigh throws you back in time in an effortless way, the film never feels like one of those clichéd historical pieces, you breath the air that the characters are breathing. The thing is that Leigh forgets about us and leaves us there in the past, with little to grab on when it comes to narrative. I felt emotionally disconnected and wasn't able to take much out of this experience.