There is a huge part of me who wants to champion the film, to talk about how beautifully it was filmed - there were many outdoor scenes reminiscient of Turner's work - and about how wonderful it is that Hollywood is looking at artist biopics... but it is all overshadowed by a total lack of background information and a series of scenes seemingly linked together by unexplained events.The film focuses on the final 25 years of Tuner's life and without knowing much about the artist's life, it can be confusing and leaves you with the feeling that you had walked into the middle of the story.
We had some background on Turner, having seen the "Turner and the Sea" exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum last September. The PEM also showed the documentary "J.M.W. Turner - A National Gallery Production" (2007) which was narrated by Jeremy Irons, so we felt relatively prepared to see the film... but we found that we had the most difficulty figuring out the relationships in Turner's life and if it wasn't for the assistance of the man sitting in front of us who had just finished reading a Turner bio and offered some information at the end of the film, we would have been Googling Turner's Wikipedia page on the drive home just to sort things out.
For example, the film really doesn't explain Turner's relationship with the mother of his two daughters or why he continually denied that he had children or what happened to the relationship and we were almost 30 minutes into the film before I realized that Turner's assistant was his own father.
Generally, I enjoy Timothy Spall... however, the majority of his dialogue consisted primarily in variations of grunting. I had some idea that Turner was "excentric" but he was potrayed as almost inarticulate for the majority of the film. The actresses potraying the two women in this stage of Turner's life, his long-time housekeeper and sometimes lover, Hannah Danby (portrayed by Dorothy Atkinson) and Sophia Booth (portrayed by Marion Bailey) with whom Turner lived with as Mr. Booth for 18 years, both give memorable performaces and it is their reactions and involvement with Turner that I was most intrigued by.
I am not an expert on John Ruskin, but Joshua McGuire's portayal of him in the film is comical. I had seen Tom Hollander portray John Ruskin in "Desperate Romantics" (2009), the mini-series about the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood... and, yes, Hollander portrayed Ruskin as awkward and repressed, as I had heard Ruskin was, but there was a part of you that connected with him and made you understand why he was the way he was - I did not get the same feeling from McGuire's Ruskin.
I don't want to discourage anyone from seeking this film out, especially if you are a huge Turner fan, but I highly recommend that you read up a little on Turner before you go.
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| Turner's "Slave Ship" - this painting was portayed in the film |
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| Turner's "The Fighting Temeraire" - there was a scene in the film where Turner is out in a small boat and witnesses the decomissioning of this ship |
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| Turner's "Rain Speed and Steam" - there was a scene in which Turner observes a train passing by similar to this painting |
Jenn White
White Rooster Studios
