THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER – It’s Lanthimos’s world and we’re all just slowly dying in it.

 

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2017)

 

There’s nothing better than watching a film made by a director you absolutely love and have it meet every expectation. It becomes even more enjoyable when the tonal frequency of the filmmaker is compatible with yours. It’s a pure coincidence, of course – no great filmmaker remains great by catering to an audience – which is what makes it special.

Since his breakout film, Dogtooth, Yorgos Lanthimos has been relentless in his personal translation of the world around us: The mundane attributes of a typical human society stretched to lengths and limits and turned upside down so that even the most vanilla of daily moments are revealed as absurdly ritualistic. The bare bones of this concept are not unique… David Lynch did it with American suburbia, Charlie Kauffman with industry and media, and Roy Andersson with middle-class Norwegians. What sets Lanthimos apart is that his characters are not mere pawns of a greater society, they are the society. While the other filmmakers play with characters in a world bigger and more comprehensive than they can really wrap their heads around (Blue Velvet, Being John Malkovich, and A Bird Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence all feature people who are naive and alien to the world they have entered), Lanthimos’s central characters build the world and make its rules themselves.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which can be considered Lanthimos’s first dive into genre cinema, plays on the same sort of premise set by James Wan’s Saw series. A sociopathic teenager named Martin (Barry Keoghan, who deserves every award for this) sets the rules for a game wherein the central character, a surgeon named Steven, (Colin Farrell) must make an unthinkable sacrifice to save himself and others. If he doesn’t play by these rules, then everyone dies. Unlike Jigsaw, Martin is not presented as a criminal mastermind, but as a timid, bumbling pubescent teen.  His actions are motivated purely by isolated revenge and not some greater worldly moral postulate. As Martin says, “this is the only thing I can think of that comes close to justice.”

Martin is a world-builder and very much in charge of everything that happens in the film. Much like the Father in Dogtooth who raises his children on strange and false fears about the world, or the Hotel Employees in The Lobster who set a timer on single people finding a mate, everyone else is at his whim. The Greek mythological allegory going on in the film is Iphigenia in Aulis, which is a tale of events sparked by Agamemnon killing one of Artemis’s sacred deer. This God-like stature of Martin is prevalent in the film, by the fact that his methodologies for enacting this vengeance are never discussed, and how he gets around is never shown. His phantom presence, over time, clouds over Steven’s family to a suffocating degree.

Despite this, Lanthimos’s villains can never be too self-serious. They are still manifested as humans, and like all humans in Lanthimos’s world, they are also uncomfortably funny. One of the most terrifyingly giddy moments in the film is when Martin showcases how much he believes his own words as he bites off a chunk of Steven’s arm, and then proceeds to do the same to his own arm. In the most monotone voice possible, mouth full of blood, he drools out, “See? It’s metaphorical.” This can be expected from a filmmaker who revels in the fact that no moment can be completely normal, but is always a direct representation of how numb we are to the absurdity of societal norms and our own thought processes. Pushing this even further is that outside of the genre tropes of a typical horror film, everything else is filled with Lanthimos’s standard ingredients, namely his dialogues which make every phrase sound like its being recited by robots attempting to mimic human conversation.

The mix is discomfiting, and that’s really what it aims to be. In the end, all of Lanthimos’s films are about things humans feel often. His darker and more sadistic tone with this film doesn’t change the fact that it’s a movie about loss and our urge to get back at those who wronged us. But even in the face of death and murder his characters can’t help but dive into whimsy. When first confronted with his impossible situation, Steven bargains with his mistakes by saying “A surgeon can never kill a patient. An anesthesiologist can kill a patient, but a surgeon never can.” It’s a hopeless tactic of ill-conceived logic, but when we’re pushed to the brink of doom, we’ll say anything to keep ourselves going. In Lanthimos’s world, our fears and actions and words become parts of a Greek tragicomedy. In every character, we see something about ourselves laughing back at us. We can’t help but (uncomfortably) laugh along too.

DUNKIRK – Racing Against the Clock

 

Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)

From the opening shot of a group of young British soldiers walking through the streets of a battleground French town during World War II, Dunkirk ignites its time bomb narrative and makes you hold your breath for the duration of the film.

Nolan’s penchant for cutting between different points of action simultaneously and muddling our perception of time between events was first showcased in the tunnel sequence in The Dark Knight, repeated again in Inception’s final dream collapse, and now here in Dunkirk, it has finally been used to its fullest effect. The film structures itself in three intertwining parts: The Mole* (where the majority of stranded British soldiers remain), The Sea (where ships hope to carry them back home), and The Air (where British jets fight with the Luftwaffe).

Nolan even quickly spells out the background of the Dunkirk situation with title cards, where German forces had cornered British and French soldiers at The Mole and the British were waiting for ships to take them home and escape death at the hands of the Germans. Of course, the Luftwaffe was flying around trying to sink any naval rescue the British had in mind. Thus, the situation was dire and the clock was ticking as the Germans were closing in.

The transparency of intentions may sound disappointing, as fans of Chris Nolan have grown to enjoy putting the pieces of his ambiguous film-puzzles together after the credits roll, but then, Dunkirk is a true story of a real event with real people. Nolan plays this straight and appropriately so. Nevertheless, there are many facets of Dunkirk which belie the traditions of a Hollywood war film, and Nolan’s direction innovates along with Hoyte van Hoytema’s camerawork and Lee Smith’s editing juxtapose points of view and deep focus shots that are mesmerizing in 70mm projection.

Adding to the technical innovations, the politics of the film, a topic which is almost impossible to not touch on in today’s climate, are in themselves unique in comparison to how Hollywood deals with war. Modeled more closely after Terrence Malick’s masterpiece The Thin Red Line rather than Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, Nolan concentrates on time, survival and the impending fear of death rather than the blood-and-guts patriotism (there is no blood in this movie) most war films aim their eye on. Sure, the pride of Britain is on display especially in Mark Rylance’s character, who is fundamental about his duty to his countrymen, but even that is more often discussed in the film as a general act of “doing good” rather than a soapbox stance for national pride. He continually says he needs to save people, not necessarily Brits. The idea of the “nation” or “citizens” is actually missing from a lot of the movie. In fact, the Germans are identified only once or twice as the enemy. In this approach, the film posits that the bravery and will to fight on for these soldiers stems from the fear and desperation that compound with each minute. They are strictly fighting to live.

Within the film’s race-against-time narrative, there are several microcosms of the same theme peppered throughout, where two young soldiers try to carry an injured man to the boat before it sails off, a pilot crash lands in the ocean trying to get out of his cockpit before it fills up with water, soldiers try to escape from the ship’s kitchen before being trapped and drowned. All of these moments are handled with efficiency by Nolan, who lays all of his cards on the table and replaces his often critiqued overwritten dialogue with well directed and nerve-wracking action sequences beautifully captured by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema. Part of me thinks Nolan used this as an opportunity to shut all the critics up about his inability to direct action as well as Michael Bay or Michael Mann.

Dunkirk is exhausting, and it hits you like a machine gun. Every moment runs at fast-forward and every cut jumps from one tense moment to the next gripping us in with an ambiguous sense of time that leaves us hanging in the balance at each second. Combined with Hans Zimmer’s deafening score which features a relentless ticking of a clock in your ear, Christopher Nolan embarks on a 106-minute sprint of directorial showmanship in what may not be his best, but at least at first watch, I can say is easily his most technically accomplished film.

 

Top 10: Best Movies of 2016

[Inset “2016 was the worst year ever” joke here]

2016 was terrible on many political fronts, but when it comes to cinema, it forces me to look at the best of things that have passed. As I moved to Washington D.C. I was surprised by the solid film culture that exists here. I guess (or at least I hope) that despite any changes in what goes on in the federal buildings of this district, the cultivation of theaters, movie screenings, and film community will continue to grow and offer more.

I look forward in 2017 to start watching more local cinema, created by D.C. filmmakers, reading scripts by D.C. talents and joining their ranks by continuing to film my own stuff. I also look forward to being more selective in the movies that I watch. As the year went on I succumbed to the glitz and glamor of major Hollywood releases, but I’m going to try to make a point to restrict myself to spending money on smaller filmmakers and production companies that really need the money and funding. I’m sure I’ll catch a big release here of there, but it will be less than last year. I’m also curious to see how this plays into the types of films I try to expose through recommendations. I’ve seen my Top 10 lists become more and more focused on smaller non-blockbuster movies as years go by. That trend I will continue, maybe next year I’ll have a list that is strictly geared towards giving exposure to movies you may have never heard of… trust me, that’s a good thing.

Anyway, here’s a list of 10 of the best movies I’ve seen this year of 2016. I also have additions at the end of the page for movies from past years which I watched for the first time this year (if that makes sense). Hopefully this will see some older movies you may not know you love yet.

#1   O.J. Made in America   (dir. Ezra Edelman  –  U.S.A.)

OJ: MADE IN AMERICA positions itself as a media-on-media critique. It uses interviews, news broadcasts, movie scenes, commercials, sports clips and analysis, and political speeches and reactions to recreate the aura and mythology of its central character, O.J. Simpson.

But the greatness of this documentary is brought forth in its ability to connect the evolution of a nation with the trajectory of one man’s fame, power, and wealth and the American people’s investment in that story. Full review HERE

#2   American Honey    (dir. Andrea Arnold  –  U.S.A.)

What sets American Honey apart is that it essentially treats seizing the moment as a survival tactic for its protagonists in conjunction with its traditional depiction as a rebellious act of pure free will…. Opportunistic capitalism meets the self-discovering millennial. The entire film rides an electric current that transfers itself directly from Arnold’s camera. The shaky-cam is a technique many have grown tired of, but its wandering, untamed eye captures the imagination of the film’s characters and their surroundings. Their dance circles bumping to trap songs have the aesthetic of a music video. Full Review HERE

#3    I, Daniel Blake   (dir. Ken Loach  –  U.K.)

The theater was full of heavy sighs, groans, headshakes, and a clear frustration bouncing off the walls from every corner. Everyone left tsk-tsking. I’ve never seen such a vocally frustrated response from an audience for a character and a story. It made it that much harder to shake off Ken Loach’s remarkable and painfully relevant film.

Full Review HERE

#4   Cameraperson   (dir. Kirsten Johnson  –  U.S.A.)

Constructed from tape Kirsten Johnson has collected over many years of travel and documentation, CAMERAPERSON is the living breathing embodiment of the phrase “a film is made in the editing room”. All of the sequences in the film jump around geographically and temporally making their juxtaposition more jarring and their lack of context daring in making the audience piece together stories of individuals themselves. It’s as educational and personal of a documentary as I’ve ever seen, and its presentation will make almost anyone search and read endlessly about the topics and historical events it showcases… many of them leading to dark and painful places and revealing terrifying truths about our world.

#5   Moonlight    (dir. Barry Jenkins  –  U.S.A.)

There is nothing better than seeing a filmmaker have his debut film emphatically stamped with his own vision. The best part of Moonlight isn’t that it sheds light on a neglected class of American society, but that it dares to examine and say a good deal about them with a completely unique perspective. Dee Rees’s sadly forgotten parable Pariah did something very similar.

#6   The Hunt for the Wilderpeople   (dir. Taika Waititi  –  New Zealand)

I have been watching Taika Waititi’s career since his debut Eagle vs. Shark back when I was a junior in high school, and it’s always rendered as very hit-or-miss, with the misses coming more frequently and missing by a lot. He may have won me over however with Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a fun New Zealander’s take on the American mismatched-pair buddy comedy. Its moments of family dynamics, what it means to be a “man”, and an undercurrent of racial disparities between New Zealand’s white and native Maori populations all come under hilarious satirical examination with Waititi’s ability to balance both cultural relevance and popcorn entertainment seamlessly.

#7   Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping   (dir. Jorma Taccone & Ariel Schaffer  –  U.S.A.)

Popstar isn’t quite the comedic success that Hunt for the Wilderpeople is, but it manages to play to its central characters’ (Lonely Island trio) built internetz fanbase with hilarious and some cringy moments that make for a light and airy satire on the pop industry’s slow demise into utter ridiculousness. I only wished in addition to the whimsy, the film added a bit of bite the way Eminem’s “Real Slim Shady” track did on this same subject of “pop stardom” 15 years ago.

#8   Les Innocents   (dir. Anne Fontaine  –  France)

Look here. For all the film critics and viewers fawning over Mel Gibson’s slathering faith-based conundrum Hacksaw Ridge that presents itself with the subtlety of hammering a nail into one’s palm, if you want a truly gut-churning film which both tests and reaffirms belief in a higher power and its place in a world slowly losing hope… look here.

#9   Sunset Song   (dir. Terrence Davies  –  Scotland)

It’s hard to call the film merely a romantic period-piece because it doesn’t dwell much on its setting or its time-period as a major factor for the relationships of its characters. Yes, there is a war, and its clear its the Scottish country-side, but people can experience what Chris Guthrie goes through in almost any time period. Enduring the abusive relationship with her domineering father, the death of her mother, falling in love, having her loved one changed from the inside-out by war. Davies turns Sunset Song into more a film of human emotion transcending time and place, but the pre-war Scottish countryside adds the nostalgia by channeling a near fairy-tale like setting, but bombarding it with a devastating story filled with every bit of the harshness of real life, but also the warmth.

Full Review HERE

#10   Rogue One   (dir. Garth Edwards  –  U.S.A.)

There was a lot of noise made about a particular Vox article with an ill-conceived clickbaity title suggesting that this Star Wars film, apart from any of the regular “canon films”, was the first one to acknowledge the “war” part of the Star Wars franchise. Watching this movie proved the article’s meat correct, despite its headline being manipulative. The fact of the matter is, the reason Rogue One resonates with people (me) not really all that enthusiastic about Star Wars movies is that it plays more towards the series biggest strengths, which is the mythos surrounding it and the humanization of its characters to being citizens under distress. Even when Leia’s planet of Alderaan was destroyed, there was hardly an acknowledgment of the weight of such a genocide occurring. It was brushed off as a plot point. We moved on. Rogue One takes the time to, for the first time in the franchise, calculate a loss within each individuals character’s contribution to the fight for a new hope. Rogue One‘s heart is more that of a war movie than it is “space-opera”.  That’s why I liked it better than any of the other ones.

Top Movies From Years Past that I Watched for the First Time in 2016 (in alphabetical order):

• Babette’s Feast  (Gabriel Axel, 1987)
• Colossal Youth  (Pedro Costa, 2006)
• El Sur  (Victor Erice, 1983)
• From What is Before  (Lav Diaz, 2014)
• Lady Snowblood  (Toshiya Fujita, 1973)
• Mumbai Cha Raja  (Manjeet Singh, 2012)
• My Home is Copacabana  (Arne Sucksdorff, 1965)
• My Dinner with Andre  (Louis Malle, 1981)
• Norte: The End of History  (Lav Diaz, 2013)  –  *masterpiece, 2010’s All-Decade List
• Ratcatcher  (Lynn Ramsey, 1999)
• Santa Sangre  (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1989)  –  *masterpiece, 1980’s All-Decade List
• Shotgun Stories  (Jeff Nichols, 2007)
• Take Aim at the Police Van  (Seijun Suzuki, 1960)
• Warrendale  (Allan King, 1968)

On Architecture & Use of Space: Ben Wheatley’s HIGH-RISE vs. Nicholas Winding Refn’s THE NEON DEMON

Two films released this year showcase first and foremost a unique architecture in their set designs and an equally unique use of space between the characters and their surroundings. However, one film manages to make a note of its structural choices in the ultimate lesson it attempts to convey. The other film’s choices are as thoughtless as flipping the thin pages of a high-end fashion magazine.

The structural alignment of beams, floors, decks, and their vicinity from the parking lot in Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise is a physical manifestation of social hierarchy and the seperation of economic class. Many British stories, from E.M. Forsters’ Howard’s End and beyond have focused on the disparity and malevolence between the bourgeoisie and those subjected to a lower pedestal and even the sewers of the social strata. In J.G. Ballard’s novel, which Wheatley has, with his signature explosive cinematic style, translated into film, these socio-economic tales of the yesteryears are thrust forward into a quasi-post-apocalyptic world (it seems normal, but something is ominous about the air) where a series of high-rises dominate the landscape and stare down (literally the top of the buildings are tilted slightly so as to seem the building is “looking” downward) to the Earth with a shivering coldness.

The main protagonist Robert Laing, has an apartment somewhere in the middle of the building. He is perpetually dressed in shirt and tie, to the point where it almost seems that that is his skin (even during sex, he never takes his outfit off). Throughout the film, the architecture of the building gives an aesthetic dimension to its residence’s statuses in society. The top floors (which also host the Architect, the creator of the building) are huge, barren except for the luxurious minimalist furniture that sets itself more like a modern art piece than something to sit on. The clothing is similarly porcelain… clean whites, straight blacks. The lower floors are decorated the way we may decorate our own houses. Pots of plants, pictures kids drew magneted to the refrigerator, some simple paintings and family photos hanging from the walls. The residents clothes have more color and are knitted with designs. Every part of the look of the film is meant to portray the status of a member or group within the “society”. As the war between the lower and upper floors begins to bubble, we start to see foundations shake quite literally… the lobby of the hotel becomes a mess and the cement beams start to chip away. There’s fires in the hallways. One of the bourgeoisie individuals jumps off his balcony to crash and die in the parking lot. A kind of cheeky metaphor of the phrase “the higher you rise the harder you fall”, and quite deliberate in this case, for the parking lot is the only part of the complex where all residents of all floors are on the same level. There’s no turning up one’s nose there because there’s nowhere to go vertically.

High-Rise: 

Now on the complete opposite end of the platform, is Nicholas Winding Refn’s latest film, The Neon Demon, one which uses space and structure for nothing other than a “cool look”. While there is a clear metaphorical density to the design of Wheatley’s film, The Neon Demon’s use of architecture is more akin to million-dollar wrapping paper on an empty box. The resulting film is eerily similar to the smug, rotten, and morally defunct interiors of the top floors of the Wheatley’s High-Rise. The characters themselves function more like glass mannequins with no interior working parts. They are quite literally the subject of objectification and the male gaze, and even if the intent of this was to reveal the hollowness of Hollywood’s show-business, there was no attempt by Refn to examine it. Instead, the camera’s central job in this film is to move in lateral motions as the actresses, scantily clad, dolled up to the hilt, stare coldly at one another or into space. Sometimes there’s flickering neon lights. Much of the minimalist scene setting in Refn’s films has existed since Valhalla Rising, but this is the first time it seems like just time-filler. The actresses just take up space.

The Neon Demon:

 

Growing Pain

Ratcatcher (Lynn Ramsay, 1999)

One of the more inventive things about the beginning of Lynn Ramsay’s Ratcatcher is that it managed to subvert my own assumptions about the early staging of a story of a young central character. The first kid that popped on screen in this movie was a handsome young man with blondish hair, the kind of kid you’d expect most people to cast in the leading role of a film. Even his name, Ryan Quinn, is that of a hero. As he ditches his mother and goes in the back near the canal to play with his friend, I found myself settling in. Essentially, the thoughts that here’s the central character of our story; we’ve already built his relationship with mother (she doesn’t have much control over him) and now he’s with his scrawny, big eared weird looking friend, perhaps the proverbial ‘sidekick’, goofing around. What I didn’t expect was the scene to end with Quinn’s death, drowning in the canal accidentally after horse-playing, and James Gillespie, the scrawny and weak-looking supposed sidekick, now becomes the central figure in our story.

Throughout the rest of the film, I found myself again being subverted from my own clichéd assumptions about a story which clearly plots itself as a bildungsroman (coming-of-age story). This is why Ratcatcher is so remarkable. There’s hardly a moment in the movie in which I just knew what was going to happen next. Cinema about children is often confused with children’s cinema, and in the same sense, the narrative structure of such cinema is easily stacked into cemented bricks of clichés. The arch of overcoming the doldrums and destitute existence of underprivileged youth is bread and butter for the coming-of-age tale, but Lynn Ramsay clearly has other ideas.

Her story is set in Scotland during the Garbage Strike, a very conscious choice, as piles of garbage stack up on the sides of the road, in apartment courtyards, and inside of homes. The strike signifies the metaphorical lawlessness of the land, wherein the despicable and derogatory acts of the children go unnoticed in a bleak, almost post-apocalyptic setting. It is a time when children, especially one like James who’s home-life is comprised of a stepfather who treats him like a bastard child, and a mother who heeds beck and call to her borderline abusive boyfriend to the detriment of her own kin, James, are thrust into an unforgiving world and forced to swim. The idea of ‘maturation’ which is the stamp of approval for most adolescent stories is almost laughable here. Perhaps in the cozy quarters of one’s middle-class suburban life, dealing with the facts of life can be hard and maturation of character signals the success of the individual having grown up (come of age), but in Ratcatcher, the holding on of sanity and morality for James, who witnesses the girl he loves, Margarete Ann, getting gang-raped over and over by older kids, having to hide and bury the guilt of having been involved in the death of Ryan Quinn in the canal, and the continuous neglect of his parents, is an impossible battle in and of itself . The depravity that James succumbs to both outside and inside the walls of his home is in many cases, a fight for maintaining his innocence, a fight against growing up, because if the truth of the world is this horrifying, then why accept it? ‘Maturation’ seems almost like giving up.

At the same time, what really magnifies this depravity is the few sequences of utter relief and beauty within the film, most notably when James hitches a busride with money he steals from his stepdad, and travels to the last bus-stop far away from his neighborhood. He sees empty houses, many of them newly built and untouched, surrounded by a golden wheat-field that shimmers in a stunning sunlight. It is here we see James smile genuinely for the first time. The second sequence is the surreal moment in which James’ animal-loving friend Kenny, ties his pet rat to a balloon and sets it afloat in the air. We see the mouse go up and the camera cuts to a shot of the rat attaining orbit in outer space. It’s a feel-good moment, one in which we envision along with the children an escape from their grounded desperation, a place where all the garbage rats get together, near a crater on the moon and happily socialize with each other. It’s a literally other-worldly scene, soon cut short later by James, at the brink of hopelessness, telling Kenny that his rat is not in outer-space but is in fact, dead. Kenny, out of frustration brings up the death of Ryan Quinn as James fault, a brutal stab back in James’ direction snapping the last straw in half.

I was reminded of similar other films which depicted in rather matter-of-fact detail the uncompromising lives of kids in destitute situations, namely the early films of Harmony Korine. In Gummo and the controversial Kids, which Korine scripted, the children were abjectly cruel, again, signaled by a seemingly post-apocalyptic setting such as “the recent tornado” which devastated Xenia, Ohio in Gummo. Unlike Korine’s movies however, which tend to revel and take a perverse joy in their lawlessness, Lynn Ramsay’s Ratcatcher remarks on the tragedy of youth as a fight against coming-of-age. It subverts the bildungsroman to suggest that James’ situation, which forced him to mature, lead to his own self-destruction; that his resistance, his naïveté, was what was keeping him alive. He did not feel the utter heartbreak of watching Margarete Anne getting gang-raped until he found love for the first time. He didn’t truly feel loneliness until his friends betrayed him. He did not truly feel guilt until Ryan Quinn’s mother cried over her son’s death on the sidewalk and offered James his old shoes. He did not understand the difficulty of escape until he bought his own bus-ride out of town to a better place. These moments ironically, signaled the maturity of our central character, and yet, were stepping stones to his own demise, his own hopelessness. It is why Ratcatcher is a painfully honest, and remarkable subversion, from beginning to end, of the coming-of-age cliché. It tests our own maturity as film-watchers, film-appreciators, to how we can react to a movie which refuses to treat us like children.

Mr. Turner

Mr. Turner (Mike Leigh, 2014)

Leigh’s ability to join both his major interests, costume dramas and kitchen-sink family affairs, together is on full display here. One of the major elements which makes Mr. Turner such a thoughtfully composed film is the recreation of dramatic events which populated JMW Turner’s life. His reluctance to admit to 2 children which he bore via one of his several mistresses, his tumultuous and often emotionally violent relationship with his servant, his companionship to his father, and the up-and-down reputation he held as a great painter in the royal societies of England at the time are all living and breathing through a time-machine which Mike Leigh has created in this film. The communications between painters, royalty, scientists, photographers, and the advent of new art forms and scientific discoveries are giddy little points of detail for those history nerds. It’s an incredibly thoughtful film, with all of its background rich in historical research.

The film however, is a deliberately paced, very slow and methodical biopic which can be rather dry in its uncovering of the painter JMW Turner. Timothy Spall is fantastic in his role, and it’s the type of acting which doesn’t draw attention to itself from the performance and charisma of the actor, but rather allows the character as he was in real life to lead the way. Spall honestly should be a shoe-in nominee for Best Actor, but many times we’ve seen that the Oscars like performances that pop and chew scenery. Spall is purely natural as JMW Turner with his heavy gargle-y voice and coughs that indicate a chronic case of bronchitis, as well as the hilariously (and tragically) droll, pained humor with which he addresses his peers. Mike Leigh is able to instill both a beautiful and sinister atmosphere in this film, with its sunshine and beautiful marine landscapes juxtaposed with dark rocky mountains and a very creepy string solo in the background score.

Overall, Mr. Turner turns out to be a well composed, wonderfully acted film if a tad too dry in the narrative department. Like most of Leigh’s film, the uninitiated will find his approach to unveiling plot-points as dreadfully slow and have you looking at your watch multiple times throughout.