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Mr. Turner Movie Review

Mr. Turner is a 2014 biographical drama film directed by Mike Leigh and starring Timothy Spall in the main role. It’s such a boring movie.

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“No good deed goes unpunished“

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J. M. W. Turner, an unconventional British painter, goes down memory lane and recalls his romantic relationship with a seaside landlady and the various accolades he received for his works of art. Turner’s paintings are quite gorgeous. This Romantic painter made very expressively colored watercolor works that are still beautiful to observe. But the movie did not highlight that properly, instead focusing more on his life than on his work, which is the main pitfall of most of these biopics.

Timothy Spall was naturally perfectly cast in the role of this man who grunts most of the time. He reminded me of Peter Pettigrew as the roles are quite similar in a way. He was excellent, but others were not as great and most of these characters were underutilized. The movie has a huge cast, so it had no time to properly deal with any of these people.

Mr. Turner is above all else a tedious biopic that is almost too much of a character study. The main figure is charismatic and eccentric enough, but I still wasn’t particularly interested in his story, certainly not for two and a half hours. There was no reason for this movie to be that long. That was such a ridiculous choice that hindered its quality significantly.

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The movie is very well shot and featuring sumptuous sets, costumes and score. However, the editing and pacing are terrible and the movie is structurally uneven and almost never engaging to watch. The movie was nominated for four technical Oscars, which was probably deserved, but it did not deserve such amazing reviews as it’s among the weakest Mike Leigh efforts.