For a second time on his career, Mike Leigh has put on hold his superbly observed everyday stories to depict the work of an artist from the Victorian-era, fifteen years after delivering his take on the world of comic opera writers Gilbert and Sullivan in ‘Topsy Turvy’ to great critical acclaim. This time he focuses in the life and artistic achievements of one of the most influential British masters, J.M.W. Turner, with extraordinary results. Wisely avoiding the traps of conventional biopics, where the obsession for an accurate chronological timeline often comes at the expense of making their subjects and those characters surrounding them believable as people, ‘Mr. Turner’ focuses in the last quarter of the painter’s life, a period where his art became more radical and his life more interesting.
