Libeling Mr. Turner
A while back I watched the movie “Mr. Turner,” a lengthy 2014 biopic about J.M.W. Turner, the great British painter. Turner is a big favorite of mine for his sublime use of light, both in his early period and in his late, and in everything in-between:
Movies about famous personalities are a funny thing. They’re not documentaries, but they masquerade as documentaries even though they don’t call themselves that, because they use a real person’s real name and the basic facts of the person’s life to tell a story that purports to be that person’s story, and yet often takes liberties with the truth as it’s known. Of course, the details of the lives of few public figures are so well-known that a moviemaker doesn’t have some blanks to fill in. But there are ways to do that that seem true to the person’s life and ways to do it that are sensationalistic and basically libelous.
Mike Leigh, the writer/director of “Mr. Turner”—which is in many ways a fine movie, particularly its cinematography and use of light and Turner’s own paintings—has chosen the sensational, libelous route. Not that Turner wasn’t a difficult and controversial figure who was seemingly mean to a lot of people. But the way Turner is portrayed in this movie by actor Timothy Spall (and it’s a real tour de force; he won several prizes for the role) is as a pig, and I mean that almost literally—a grunting, bestial, grasping animalistic taker who also has a caring and romantic side he mostly keeps very well hidden.
I’m not alone in being struck by this. Here’s one British reviewer:
Spall coughs and shambles about the place like a moulting, phlegmy Gruffalo, eyes bright and hungry, bottom lip jutting proudly forward like the spout of a custard jug.
You think that’s hyperbole? It’s not. And he means it as a compliment.
The movie features a scene of rape—or forced sex, if you want to call it that—which is remarkably repellent, not only for the situation itself but for Turner’s incredible repertoire of grunts which often enter the realm of the lowest tuba-like frequencies accompanied by a deathlike rattle that is almost literally sickening. What’s more, there’s no basis whatsoever for this incident, as director Mike Leigh has conceded. So there is no historical justification for putting that scene in there, a scene which will probably become a Turner Truth for much of the movie-watching public who saw the film, and will be forever linked with his great art:
But when asked for the factual basis for Turner’s sexual attacks on his housekeeper, Leigh’s answer was along these lines: “Well, we knew that she had been living with him as his housekeeper for thirty or forty years, and.. it just felt right.” There was, Leigh admitted, no hard evidence, that Turner had regularly forced himself on the woman.
To Leigh, that seems to make no difference.
The motivation is probably what motivates a lot of movies these days: sensationalism. Who cares if an actual historical person’s reputation is sullied in the process?
I feel this way about all biopics that do that sort of thing. If you’re going to write something fictional, don’t use a real person’s real name. And if you’re going to make stuff up, don’t go so far afield. It’s true that Turner was called “uncouth” by certain of his contemporaries, but back then the word didn’t necessarily refer to being a rapist or literally sounding like a pig.
Today’s art—both fine and literary—is often so degraded that many people in the arts seem to get their jollies from trashing the greatness of yesteryear, and invite you to trash it too. That probably makes their own dubious achievements seem more special. But as I said, the film “Mr. Turner” already had enough going for it without needing to do this.
[NOTE: The film also does a number on the art critic John Ruskin, who is portrayed as a clone of Elmer Fudd.]
Documentaries used to be fact-based. They have become vile propagandistic pieces, typically tools of the Left. Michael Moore, anyone?
Turner was an absolutely great painter. One of the few really and truly great. Neo’s choice of the illustration shows how he anticipated the future of painting, by maybe 150 years: light, flow, color, abstract save for the faint ship.
Yes, he may have grunted; but we all have and do.
“Documentaries used to be fact-based. They have become vile propagandistic pieces”
Neo points to yet one more example of this “post-truth”, sensationalize to rise above the cacophony, world we live in.
It’s ubiquitous. The simple truth cannot stand. People only pay attention to those who can most hyperbolize for attention, and to push an agenda (e.g. “flight 93”, “CAGW”).
The only “truth” is then the one our “bubble” accepts. Left vs Right : Red vs Blue.
Yes, it is really obnoxious to take real historical personages and rewrite their characters like this. One particularly obnoxious example was in the film ‘Valkyrie’, where Erich Fellgiebel…who IRL was one of the earliest and most courageous members of the German military conspiracy against Hitler…was portrayed as an arrant coward.
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/6576.html
Well, I must say I have somewhat the same reaction to a currently widely acclaimed musical.
Turner is also one of my favorite painters, for all of the reasons that you and others have cited.
I didn’t know much about the man himself, and was looking forward to seeing this movie….I was completely turned off by the rape scene, and gave up on it at that point.
This movie doesn’t present itself as a documentary, so the assumption of absolute truthfulness isn’t warranted. Since it is about someone who actually lived, there is the expectation, which I had, that it would not swerve too far from the truth. Obviously it did.
The director wanted the dramatic tension created by the contrast of Turner’s magnificent art and his personal piggishness. It’s not a side issue in the movie. He chose an actor, after all, who is known for his grotesque face. And what moral failure could you portray that is in tune with the concerns of our times more than the abuse of women? Well, maybe, of black women–but that would violate verisimilitude.
At least to me, the meaning of the film is that great art can emerge from the worst human beings. It would make its point with less force but more convincingly if it didn’t rely on fiction.
I rank Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy as great. If you enjoy Gilbert and Sullivan you must see it. But now I wonder if this comedy is equally untruthful.
Just like the Rathergate movie, “Truth.”
I believe the family of an officer on the Titanic sued the fimmaker for a vile and false representation of the guy. Good for them.
“The motivation is probably what motivates a lot of movies these days: sensationalism. Who cares if an actual historical person’s reputation is sullied in the process?” [Neo]
Gee! At first I thought you were referencing the news media.
Seriously, though, the problem of filtering out masterpieces from wholesale production of works of art is ages old. Beethoven, to name just one artist, lived when others were composing as well. Name one. If you’ve ever listened to one of his contemporaries’ works (recordings are hard to find because their not often performed; the works are just not all that great) you suddenly realize why Beethoven is as honored as he is.
Michelangelo, too. Michelangelo’s nose was broken by one of his fellow artists. Can anyone name that felow artist? How about one of his works?
This cycle has become even worse in the 21st century because now, anyone can publicize, publish or release a Youtube video. There is so much junk out there from so many sources that it will take some time and some work for many of the masterpieces to be recognized and acknowledged.
This is why I confine my movie going to cartoons, they are the only films with a connection to reality.
Chuck,
Cartoons—everything one needs to know about life.
My favorite: Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny are running for office. Bugs shows up with a Teddy Roosevelt moustache, a smokey bear hat and a club and says: “I speak softly and carry a biiiiig stick.” Sam shows up with a humongous club and says: “WELL I SPEAK LOUDLY AND CARRY A BIIIIIGER STICK—— and I use it, too!” (whaps Bugs).
Such is life.
Interesting: Ruskin probably didn’t destroy Turner’s works after all: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/dec/31/arts.artsnews
“Documentaries used to be fact-based. They have become vile propagandistic pieces”
Documentaries have never been entirely without propaganda. We just didn’t have the alternative sources of information in previous times to judge for ourselves.
I repeat for emphasis, Chester: Documentaries used to be fact-based. Based. No human endeavor is free of human error and folly. The task was and is to recognize and minimize. Which takes some humility, and humility is in darn short supply.
“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit” fully applies to pretenders such as these.
Then again, if a public mainly interested in bread and circuses didn’t support the mass media, this type of shoddy propaganda would never see the light of day.
Oldflyer,
Actually ‘Hamilton’ is historically quite accurate but I’m not sure Alexander could rap.
This is why I did not see the Tom Hanks / Clint Eastwood movie ‘Sully,’ about the US Airways jet that ditched in the Hudson after colliding with a flock of geese. The only way the writer could find to inject ‘dramatic conflict’ into such an inherently boring event was to make the National Transportation Safety Board investigators into a snarling pack of inquisitors, hell-bent on destroying that nice Capt. Sullenberger’s career and reputation. The characters in the movie have fake names; originally the script used the real Board members’ names. It has been reported Sullenberger suggested to Eastwood that the names be fictionalized. (Probably to avoid libel suits.)
Apropos the painting: the silly looking fish always spoiled it for me. My eye travels from the sunset to the ship, the suspense builds, but wait, what is that goofy monster in the wave? Giggle. Leave the fish out and it is much more impressive.
Mark Twain comments:
“What a red rag is to a bull, Turner’s “Slave Ship” was to me, before I studied art. Mr. Ruskin is educated in art up to a point where that picture throws him into as mad an ecstasy of pleasure as it used to throw me into one of rage, last year, when I was ignorant. His cultivation enables him–and me, now–to see water in that glaring yellow mud, and natural effects in those lurid explosions of mixed smoke and flame, and crimson sunset glories; it reconciles him–and me, now–to the floating of iron cable-chains and other unfloatable things; it reconciles us to fishes swimming around on top of the mud–I mean the water. The most of the picture is a manifest impossibility–that is to say, a lie; and only rigid cultivation can enable a man to find truth in a lie. But it enabled Mr. Ruskin to do it, and it has enabled me to do it, and I am thankful for it. A Boston newspaper reporter went and took a look at the Slave Ship floundering about in that fierce conflagration of reds and yellows, and said it reminded him of a tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes. In my then uneducated state, that went home to my non-cultivation, and I thought here is a man with an unobstructed eye. Mr. Ruskin would have said: This person is an ass. That is what I would say, now.”
Saying it twice doesn’t make it so Frog.
T Says:
December 3rd, 2016 at 3:07 pm
* *
Two semi-related stories, which I have internalized over many years and can no longer source:
A theater director, early on in his career, decided to produce a season of the “Little Known Works of Shakespeare.” At the end of the project, he admitted that now he knew WHY they were little known.
A scholar with an unusually free summer decided that Jane Austen’s reputation was too puffed-up, and that surely there were other authors of the period who were just as good but hadn’t had the luck of being so favored. So she started at the beginning of the relevant shelf in the university library stacks and read everything in that section. The conclusion? Austen’s works were, in fact, the only thing worth salvaging from the era.
There are hidden gems – sometimes. Haydn’s less-performed symphonies are performed less for a reason. Yup. You listen to them and you think “Haydn’s done better”. But they’re Haydn, and that’s not the worst thing in the world. (That’s not true for every composer. When Bach is mechanical rather than lyrical, he’s just not enjoyable.)
“Movies about famous personalities are a funny thing.”
Indeed they are if you mean funny as in comedy. Years ago the lefties produced a movie titled “The Trials of Alger Hiss” which claimed that Hiss was framed. If you know the real history you might find the movie funny.
Lee Merrick, how odd that you see Hamilton as “historically quite accurate”. I hope that you are not visually challenged.
I am confident that the real Hamilton did not “rap”; among other oddities.
I will admit that I seem to be the only person commenting on this site; and maybe the only one anywhere who sees a disparity. But, that is ok.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
Congressional Record–Appendix, pp. A34-A35 January 10, 1963
http://cns7prod.s3.amazonaws.com/attachments/communist_goals.pdf
A bit late to notice or do a thing about it, eh?
But then again, how else would a woman shove a steak knife into her uterous and throw tomatoes at the blade to make “art”? and where would “art” be if she could not show her public school kids?
should we call it Twart?
I guess next your going to find out thot they changed the schools, and that this form of “art” neo speaks of is a form of planned propaganda, not “natural”
but thats the point of the new war and conflict
to keep actions below the level of response or retailliation or being sure
you CAN read about it, and how it works, but you wont figure it out as you wont think that any single event counts enough to respond to. so through a million paper cuts the body politic dies… and not one single event is enough to trigger response or defense… and without that last point you cant get the edumacated to think how they are being played… i know, i have tried to teach for 10 years and we arrived at the brink of a change which may not be averted, and yet, still dont get the ins and outs, the methods and methodologies and techiques, etc…
funny, but when this results in a loss, we wont be able to chat about it any more… but the funny part is that the state fears these chats, and i dont know why… they dont lead to any action that matters…
thats cause there is no such thing as talent…
[according to the untalented]
so get your brushes out and start painting like Michelangelo… he had no talent.. (oh, i have tried to teach people what i can do that got me signed to one of the worlds top agencies… but they dont seem to get how)
🙂