Mike Leigh’s J.M.W. Turner biopic **Mr. Turner **promises to be a big old celebration of all that is good in English arts. If you like Mike Leigh and you’ve been known to frequent The Tate Gallery or The Royal Academy, the sight of Timothy Spall’s painter hitting the canvas is sure to be pure catnip when the film gets its release in October. It makes its bow in Cannes this week and has a new trailer to mark the occasion.
brightcove.createExperiences();Leigh’s 13th feature film spans the final 25 years of the painter’s life, leading up to his demise in 1851 aged 76. Spall, basically a nipper at 57, even learnt the rudiments of Turner’s craft for the role. As he told The Telegraph, he completed one of Turner’s paintings of steamers. “I’d reckon I’m now as good as Turner was when he was, say, nine,” Spall revealed, “and he was pretty bloody good at nine”.
The film, like **Amadeus **and **Pollock **before it, will explore the artist’s unquenchable desire to create. “Turner was a compulsive artist,” Leigh explained. “Turner had to paint, had to draw, all the time, he just never stopped. It was an absolute obsession.”
Like Mozart and Pollock Jackson, Turner’s genius was tempered by, well, temper. “[He] was eccentric, anarchic, vulnerable, imperfect, erratic and sometimes uncouth,” Leigh told the broadsheet. “He could be selfish and disingenuous, mean yet generous, and he was capable of great passion and poetry.” The trailer majors on his rivalry with artist peers John Constable (James Fleet) and John Ruskin (Joshua McGuire).
Leigh has assembled a cadre of veteran collaborators for this one, including Vera Drake's Marion Bailey, who plays Turner’s Margate landlady, and Topsy-Turvy's Dorothy Atkinson, his housekeeper, while cinematographer Dick Pope, costumer Jacqueline Durran and Oscar winner make-up designer Christine Blundell former key parts of his production team. All the signs are positive for a Topsy-Turvy-calibre period piece from the director.
Empire’s Damon-on-the-spot, Damon Wise, will be reporting on Mr. Turner from Cannes. If you can’t wait for that – and we wouldn’t blame you – head to his first-look report on period comedy** Grace Of Monaco. Mr. Turner arrives in UK cinemas on October 31.