Mr Turner - the Sun is God

Well, we found a cinema that was showing Mr Turner. So we went! What a great couple of hours.
Too much to write about with too little knowledge, so here are a few impressions(!)

Turner was interested - obsessed? - with capturing light. So I thought I would look at Mike Leigh's use of light in the film.

Light before electricity? Ooh, scary. Up to bed by candle-light, shivering shadows, coal-dark corners. Puff, the candle's out and Dracula's dentures drill into your juicy jugular. Make a horror film? No problem.

But Mr Turner is not Gothic horror. Luckily for Leigh Turner had a pretty penny or two, so there are always enough candles in his home to avoid turning the biopic into a literal film noir.

What was really good was the extensive use of window light in what would otherwise have been dark scenes. Turner and his lady love were no beauties (although they saw beauty in one another) but Leigh employs beautiful and subtle chiaroscuro effects in several of their scenes, thanks to a handy window.

Oh, and towards the end of the film Turner's lady love (Mrs Booth) sort of sublimates her grief at Turner's death by going hammer and tongs with cleaning cloths at a window. The same window that lit up the lovers, and from which Turner would have seen the Thames and its shipping. And back tracking to the time when Turner first met Mrs Booth, he took a room at her Margate boarding house because of the view from the window. We, the audience, were treated to wonderfully framed pictures of sailing boats and sunlight, seeing what Turner saw and painted.

The theme of light is pervasive throughout the film.

Leigh effectively uses a looking glass to reflect a doctor sitting on Turner's bed, and if I remember rightly, he used one to reflect Turner on another occasion.

 Early on a Scottish woman demonstrates a prism to Turner and his 'daddy' and later, Turner has his photo taken and is fascinated (but worried) by this new art/science.

But the best treatment of light was a sort of trompe l'oeil which Leigh used again and again. You'd see a close up of a beautiful sky filling the screen, all diaphanous colours, like a Turner painting, and the camera would slowly zoom out, revealing more of this painting, until at last you saw Turner walking on the moors or on the beach and you realised this was no painting but (a depiction of) reality. It was as if Turner was so immersed in what he saw that he became it. Turner is his landscapes. Not to mention seascapes.

Another neat little trick that Leigh used several times was when the camera panned across a scene. The focus would become very soft, so the people shimmered, rather like Turner's treatment of light.

I could talk about the light and shade of Turner's character, and branch out into discussing other aspects of the film, such as the wonderful acting, but I'm not going to as I'm tired. Instead, I'll finish with a bit of personal biography.

As a child I lived in London, about midway between Cheyne Walk where Turner lived, and the Tate Gallery, (now Tate Britain) where some of Turner's paintings are displayed. Eleanor and I would walk home from our school in Southwark, across Lambeth Bridge, and often popped in to the Tate and have a look around. We didn't realise how lucky we were. If we decided to take the bus we would change at the Houses of Parliament, and sometimes would wander up Whitehall to the National Galley. My favourite painting was Da Vinci's Virgin of the Rocks,

Years later, I took a party of school children to the National Gallery. We were studying the topic of water, and we going to look at Turner's Rail, Steam and  Speed, and Piero della Francesca's The Baptism of Christ, among others.

What was especially good about it was that it was our OFSTED week, and we managed to escape the inspector's evil clutches for the day. Another good thing about that day was that it was my task to talk about the Baptism painting. As a Catholic I was well up on Christian symbolism, and of course, I had prepared extra specially well just in case an inspector decided to accompany us. (Three classes were going). So there was I in this little alcove where the painting is displayed, a group of children sitting goggle eyed on the floor before me, and me spouting off my  knowledge. A group of tourists gathered around and listened in, and I quite enjoyed myself pretending I was on TV speaking to thousands. I don't know what the attendant thought. He was sitting on his chair nearby, maybe oblivious to the whole thing, maybe really impressed, or maybe thinking, what an eejit! It doesn't matter. It is a really good memory for me.