I saw this at a film festival recently. Don't bother. It's dull and absolutely uninteresting. The characters are poorly developed. There is no insight into what motivates any of them. It's basically just a series of events in Turner's life without telling any story about him.
The most interesting character in the film was the painter Haydon, but he's only in three scenes.
Oh christ, this is a shame, sir. Mr. Turner is one film by a veteran director that is subtle, poetic and infinitely more skilled than a lot of the works of directors which get more praise. Mr. Turner is a great film by a team of gifted people with nothing to prove. It says more about life, death, art and love than any other films of the past year, and it doesn't even try.
Later that day, after tea... I died, suddenly.
I loved it. The story stays in the present but attaches to the past nicely, the characters are wonderfully drawn and acted, and the historical atmosphere is absolutely realistic. But besides that the people LIVE. 9 stars.
shareTwo questions:
What flew up your ***?
AND
What movie were you watching?
I thoroughly enjoyed this film. Great acting, score, directing, and cinematography. I think you need to stick with your Vin Diesel and Transformer movies and chill the **** out.
Dull & Awful, very self-revealing. You could have added shallow & anti-artistically linear, too.
~ Native Angeleno
I agree 100%!!
Great actors, great recreation of the era, good costumes, fabulous photography and perhaps a good approximation to the work of Turner. But all threse things are secondary on a movie. The main keys on a good film are the STORY and the way it's developed, I mean, the screenplay. And the screenplay in this case is insubstantial, uninteresting and, yes, DULL. The dialogs are superficial and for moments STUPID. 'Nothing' happens in towo hours and a half. And the music, gloomy and anti-melodic, does not contribute to save the stew.
I can't understand how the hell the producers did bet on this project after reading the script...
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Improvised scenes
see self-portrait on Wikipedia
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Are you so sure about Leigh technique? We know what he chose to tell. About it being improvised. I never believe this. Movies are expensive toys.
And the proof it right here, there's close to none of being improvised scenes in this movie. Maybe sex with Hannah, petty talks and dealings with Mrs Booth. We know next to none about her actually, so no wonder. Though I'm not sure about Mrs Somerville, if the optical experimenting scene really took place in Turner's house. It doesn't mean it wasn't. Mrs Somerville was a real woman, an amateur scientist who got well known by popularisation scientific achievements.
Nearly all the scenes are real. They aren't fictional or improvised, rather a bit shifted, nuanced, altered - it's movie after all! In other words, staged.
For ex., the red buoy. In real life, it was like we saw, only the final touch which transformed the stroke of Turner's brush into red buoy took place after a couple of days, not so soon as in the movie. But Leigh was right, the scene staged brilliantly. And the Constable's words were real, too.
That was with many others scenes: surely Turner was interested in new technics and inventions, he saved that photo master from troubles when he was forced to pay 300 p. fine (he was risky, working with no license). The words he was saying – often his real words.
It is a most subtle film, but blind eyes won't see it.
Just think about the presence of photography in the film, and the reflexion Leigh makes about it. The film encompasses so many such things, and feels so flawlessly natural that some incinsere people will inevitably call it boring.
Later that day, after tea... I died, suddenly.
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It's probably the biopic which relies the less on the character it is portraying, but at the same time Turner and Turner's life are very worthy of being shown on film, as they summon so many questions about our perception of what an artist should be, but even more so about the artist's relationship with the outside world, and the film, as well as being a reflexion on life, death and love in many regards also presents, in a very understated but efficient manner the artistic context of that time by showing us the academies, the birth of photography, but also by foreshadowing the coming of the impressionists (who were very inspired by Turner) by showing us the opposition of Turner painting in his studios vs Turner seeking inspiration in the outdoors. This is how thought-out the film is. And there's much more.
By the way, out of pure curiosity, why did you give Petra von Kant a 1?
Later that day, after tea... I died, suddenly.
You are spot on.
It was dreadful. Just like the Brits.
This film is as Anglo-saxon as it can get.
Oh dear, if you hate the British so much why bother to watch such a British film? Maybe it would have pleased you better if brad Pitt had taken the leading role? And I guess in those days people's teeth were in a pretty bad state. Things are better nowadays, it's just that many Brits don't go in for populating their mouths with enormous, dazzling, artificial looking tombstones that Americans tend to find so popular . . .
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