Prized Turner - Hot Press meets Mike Leigh

At 71-years of age, Mike Leigh doesn’t care to spend too much time thinking about his own legacy. His patient chuckle when the question arises, however, suggests the revered director of films such as Naked, Vera Drake and this year’s exceptional Mr Turner is more than aware that it’s on other people’s minds.

“I suppose... If you’re asking me if I were to contemplate dropping dead tomorrow, would I feel that I’d earned my keep in life? I think I’ve been very lucky in the sense that I’ve been able to do what I wanted to do, the way I wanted to do it. Therefore I’m comfortable that the 19 films I’ve made and various other bits and pieces stand strong.”
Mike Leigh remains a vital force, renowned for the improvisational style his actors start from and stick to, placed alongside Ken Loach as an English filmmaker unafraid to examine the grimmer aspects of British life. Every handful of years, another well-regarded addition to his canon arrives. If journalists bring up his legacy, it’s only to figure out where his latest work fits. Indeed, considering his latest work is a grand biopic on the painter JMW Turner, a critic or two will argue that the draw for Leigh this time – the chance to examine the uncompromising artist as an older man – is obvious.
The idea, in fact, stretches back to the late ‘90s. Leigh and his cinematographer Dick Pope both had a long-standing love for Turner’s work and a desire to conjure that beautiful imagery up on the big screen.
“After we made [Gilbert and Sullivan musical drama] Topsy-Turvy, it became clear to me that we could actually make period films in the way that I operate. It felt like a good idea and thus far it still does!”
Worth the wait. But, why the wait?
“A lot of people think, ‘Well this is a worthy project, but is it actually a commercial project.’ I wish that it was true that I only have to mention my name and money comes pouring out of the cash cow, but this is not the case.”
With his art form of choice involving such a mammoth logistical undertaking each time out, you wonder whether he envies artists like Turner, who merely need a canvas and some paints to express themselves?
“Well I do. Except what I have that they don’t is the community of people I work with. The gregarious nature of what we do. I know painters and writers – and you do too in Dublin – and they can become very self-absorbed, isolated and self-centred people. The great thing about filmmaking is its collaborative nature. The craic is great. I can’t imagine anyone experiences the same kind of craic sitting in a room by themselves.”
Leigh was joined by a number of familiar faces for the production of Mr. Turner. The titular hero is portrayed masterfully by long-time collaborator Timothy Spall, who presents us with an “eccentric, conflicted, grubby” man who seems to grunt through life as if frustrated at how much he wishes to express.
Leigh was fascinated by the tension between the flawed, unapologetic humanity of Turner, and the “sublime work” that sprang from him.
As part of his preparation, Spall also picked up the paint brush.
“People have made a lot of that,” says Leigh, “but if you’re going to play Turner in a film about Turner, the least you can do is spend a couple of years painting! If he was going to play a blacksmith, he’d be expected to know how to shoe a horse. In the end, the aspiration was not for him to become Turner – or become a painter – but for us to at least be able to film in such a way that you didn’t have to cutaway to somebody else’s hand in a close-up.”
So did the actor become skilled enough that you would happily hang a gift of a ‘Spall original’ above your mantlepiece?
“Since he’s made paintings and actually had an exhibition, I’d rather not answer that question!” Leigh laughs.
Marion Bailey, who has appeared in three other Leigh films and is the director’s real-life partner, plays Mrs. Booth, Turner’s companion in the later part of his life. Bailey’s scenes with Spall are filled with joy and warmth.
“What’s interesting is that she knows nothing about art or culture, or who he is. She just takes him as she finds him.”
Little was known of Booth, while other characters – such as Turner’s art colleagues – are well recorded. You imagine the responsibility of accurately portraying people who once drew breath could weigh heavily.
“It has to work on its own terms,” Leigh proffers. The director points to one particular scene at The Royal Academy as “a famous event that took place.” However: “If you jumped into a time machine and went back to that moment, you can be absolutely sure that what you’d see bears no resemblance whatsoever to what’s in the film. Because how could it? So you’re bringing to life something, but in the end, it’s only our collective notion of what that was.”
In an article in early October, The Guardian’s Philip Hoare took umbrage at what he saw to be the reductive portrayal of John Ruskin, deeming Joshua McGuire’s performance to be “a simpering Blackadderish caricature of an art critic.”
“Our admittedly humorous portrait of Ruskin is not gratuitous,” counters Leigh. “We came to it from a notion of him as this prig. This precocious guy that was cosseted by his parents. I mean, when he went to university his mother actually took rooms near his rooms. I’m surprised she wasn’t breastfeeding him really! How he talks about Turner and Claude [Lorrain] comes from Ruskin’s attitudes. Obviously, there is little doubt that Ruskin himself would not be a short person with a deficient ‘r’ but I think we’ve somehow dramatised what feels to us like the essence of Ruskin; the nature of that personality.”
We end as we start, with the spotlight back on Leigh. Does the idea that, in the distant future, another filmmaker might just stop one day and think, ‘a Mike Leigh biopic sounds like a terrific idea!’ sit comfortably with him?
“You mean all about me? It would... though the actor who would have been good as me is long since dead – Peter Lorre!”

Mr. Turner is in cinemas now.