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Mr Turner is the new Mike Leigh film, starring Timothy Spall as eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner, looking back over the man’s last 25 years, and it’s already been nominated for the 2014 Palme d’Or in Cannes.
Profoundly affected by the death of his father, loved by a housekeeper he takes for granted and occasionally exploits sexually, he forms a close relationship with a seaside landlady with whom he eventually lives incognito in Chelsea, where he dies. Throughout this, he travels, paints, stays with the country aristocracy, visits brothels, 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.
Mr Turner also stars Paul Jesson, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey, Sandy Foster, Karl Johnson, Ruth Sheen, Amy Dawson and Lesley Manville, and while it’s not quite my bag, it will be for many others, and for them, it’s released in the UK on October 31st.
Check out the trailer below:
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.