Mr. Turner (2014)

Making a film about an artist's work is a risky venture. The transformation of one form of art into another is a challenging task that requires distancing from clichés about what the making of art is like. Mr Turner, Mike Leigh's film about William Turner, does not manage to dodge these difficulties altogether. It sometimes falls into the trap of emulating Turner's paintings - and that emulation is bound to fail. Beyond that, Timothy Spall embodies the role of Turner in a nuanced and complex way that makes us look away from the usual representations of the travail of the genius. Yes, there are a couple of scenes that capture Turner as the 'misunderstood artist' but many more sides of his person are explored as well, fortunately. What I will remember from this movie is not so much the scenes of the film - even though Mike Leigh's improvisational techique works as well here as elsewhere - as the bodily presence Timothy Spall conjures up. My own hunch is that it is very uncommon for male actors or male roles to have this kind of presence - and this of course is very revealing of our culture. (My counter-example would be Harvey Keitel who has had many untypical roles.) Spall's Turner grunts, shuffles around the room and gestures to signal his dissatisfaction. This bodily presence characterizes the role of art as well. Instead of art becoming a strange emanation from the genius's head, it is rendered into bodily exertion - daily craft, the embodied gaze, the ageing hand. The transcendent immenseness of Turner's painting is thus placed in a framework of human bodily frailty. This is what I mainly appreciated about Mr. Turner as a film.