Director: Mike Leigh; Screenwriter: Mike Leigh; Starring: Timothy Spall, Paul Jesson, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey, Karl Johnson, Ruth Sheen, Leslie Manville; Running time: 150 mins; Certificate: 12A

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Mike Leigh is a director synonymous with kitchen sink realism, but in exploring the life of 19th-century landscape artist JMW Turner, he takes the opportunity to get outdoors and capture some beautiful views. Less handsome but equally imposing is Timothy Spall as the man himself, always looking out and rarely looking inward, which is a strength (adding to the intrigue) and a weakness of the film.

Leigh homes in on the last 25 years of Turner's life when he is an artist of great renown, living in London with his doting father (Paul Jesson) and equally devoted housekeeper Hannah Danby (Dorothy Atkinson). There is a studied formality in the way Leigh conveys the dynamics between them, punctuated by bursts of impropriety. Turner is endearingly tactile with his old dad, but he gropes Hannah with cold abruptness and worse than that, she appears to enjoy it. She also longs for his affection, but this subplot is wild speculation on Leigh's part.

What is documented and yet, what Leigh doesn't care to explore in any depth, is the broken relationship between Turner and the mother of his two daughters Sarah Danby (Ruth Sheen), aunt to Hannah. All the women are caricatures, which serves to make Turner appear less cruel and especially Sarah, who blows in like a gale every now and then to berate him. That's hardly surprising, though, because he denies the existence of a family, even skipping the funeral when one of his girls passes away.


Times of crisis have little sway as Turner keeps himself remote, going as far as to strap himself to the mast of a ship to paint a storm (although that scene may be based more on self-promoting bluster than truth).

Leigh sticks so closely to Turner's wilfully blinkered view that it's difficult to get the full picture of the man. He is a bundle of contradictions; generous with colleagues – such as the always impecunious Benjamin Robert Haydon (Martin Savage) – and sweetly admiring with the woman who would become his rock, Margate landlady Mrs Booth (Marion Bailey). His dry wit and rough-edged London brogue lend him charm, too, especially because he looks and sounds so incongruous among the blue bloods in his social circle. Still, he can't win over the Royal family who despise his impressionistic style with its smudgy, smoky, stormy skies.

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Spall does a tremendous job in conveying all facets of the man, even raising a few chuckles with his tendency to grunt and with that alone, articulate varying degrees of pleasure or disapproval.


Turner was deemed a controversial artist as he moved away from definition in his paintings and that is seen here to hit a raw nerve. Spall does a tremendous job in conveying all facets of the man, even raising a few chuckles with his tendency to grunt and with that alone, articulate varying degrees of pleasure or disapproval. What frustrates is that Leigh seems equally averse to form and structure, content to drift from scene to scene, marking up the good and the bad without a clear overview.

His fluid approach (writing scenes based on rehearsals) has produced brilliant works of fiction – most recently Happy-Go-Lucky and Another Year – but with this, he strains at the boundaries of historical fact. This is a fascinating, lusciously detailed portrait of an artist, but it could have used a little less colour and a bit more subtle shading.

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