Mr. Turner

Mike Leigh’s movie about the last quarter (1826 to 1851) of J. M. W. Turner’s life is a startling portrait of an obsessive artist, a famous man who lives anonymously. Turner (Timothy Spall) sleeps in his clothes and wanders alone, sketchbook in hand, through the Kentish port town of Margate and in Holland, on a bluff, staring at the sun on the horizon. Returning to his London house, storming the Royal Academy in a frock coat and top hat, he attacks his canvases like a proto-Action painter, with stabbing brush, spit, and dusty substances that he rubs in. Spall has a pared-away chin, and a small mouth pulled up toward a shapeless nose. It’s a face that repels examination—his Turner wants to see, not to be seen. Or to be much heard. Indistinct syllables (varieties of grunt, snarl, and roar) emerge from the clogged drain of his throat. The period re-creation—grim, early Victorian, relieved by the ravishing countryside and sea—is the background for Turner’s paintings, with their effulgence of white, gold, ochre, orange, and red. With Martin Savage, as the unsuccessful painter Benjamin Haydon; Lesley Manville, as Turner’s servant-mistress; and Marion Bailey, as the middle-aged widow he lives with at the end. The cinematography is by Dick Pope. (In limited release.)