Mr. Turner
classified 12APlease note: This was screened in Nov 2014
Mike Leigh's vivid and hugely enjoyable portrait of artist Joseph Mallord William Turner (Timothy Spall, who scooped the Best Actor prize at Cannes) is a luminous portrait to the master of light, someone whose canvases, which revelled in the possibilities of colour and movement, could almost be early forerunners of cinema. Leigh focuses on Turner as a middle aged man, tracing the last 25 years of his life when his paintings were starting to be mocked as he turned experimental. We observe his relationship with his housekeeper, his rejection of his children, his scuffles with the Royal Academy (where he winds up John Constable and nips at stuffy art critic John Ruskin, himself the subject of another film this month, Effie Gray) and the awkward blooming of his last affair. Leigh recreates some of his best known paintings (among them The Fighting Temeraire, where we see Turner lashed to the mast so he can experience a storm at sea) in spectacular fashion, but it is the everyday aspects of his life that are the most fascinating. Soulful, sad and joyful, this is a brilliant and visually immaculate (but of course) work of art about a complicated and contradictory man. Excellent.
Ticket prices: Screenings before 16:00: £5.50 full / £4.00 concessions. Screenings after 16:00: £8.00 full / £6.50 concessions.