Mr Turner.

One of the most important elements of any movie is its stories characters and how they are drawn and presented to us on the screen. Mike Leigh is a past master in converting actor’s lines to a totally believable portrayal of their personalities.  Leigh’s films over the years have given us people like Poppy Cross in Happy Go Lucky (2008), Mary in Another Year (2010), Maurice and Cynthia Purley in the award winning Secrets & Lies (1996) and many more besides. But it’s not just the main characters that are finely illustrated but also the minor one’s. This is one of the noticeable qualities of the British director and writer’s latest movie Mr Turner (2014).

 

The artist.

If anything the characters in this biographical period drama are as good as anything that Leigh has done in the past. Firstly we have William ‘Billy’ Turner (Timothy Spall) an artist who painted rather drab seascapes in the 19^th century, had two mistresses, the first of which, Sarah Danby (Ruth Sheen), bore him two daughters, which he is said to have denied. His second mistress Sophia Caroline Booth (Marion Bailey) who he shared a house in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea as ‘Mr Booth’ for 18 years and where he uttered his dying words “The sun is God” Both these women are totally different with Sarah the hard faced women who felt very wronged by Billy Turner, where as the twice widowed Sophia was in love with him.

 

'Mr Booth' with Sophia.

The two William Turners.

Two other characters are worth mentioning, Turner faithful housekeeper Hannah Danby (Dorothy Atkinson), who was devoted to her master, although he sexually abused her, and who suffered from the skin disease psoriasis. The other is Turners father, also called William (Paul Jesson) who had lived with and helped his son for 30 years since the death of his wife at a young age locked away in an insane asylum. It was this mans death in 1829 that had a profound effect on the painter who was getting ever more eccentric and also beginning to suffer bouts of depression. It’s these two characters that light up the screen every time they appear, and I can’t help feeling that the film looses something after the death of William Snr?   

 

The faithful housekeeper.

We could be watching an adaptation of a Charles Dickens novel, the writing is that good. Along with the award winning performance of Timothy Spall, the cinematography of Dick Pope, who captures the vivid light and colour of so many of the scenes that would end up on the artistes canvas and who has worked along side Leigh on many of his movies, and the unique detail’s that make this movie head and shoulders above other period dramas and as importantly brings the 19^th century world of art, culture and promiscuity to life.    

Deathwatch.

Death has always fascinated filmmakers! The French film director Bertrand Tavernier (Princess of Montpensier 2010), a self professed sci-fi addict, with the help of screenwriter David Rayfiel has adapted David Compton’s novel The Unsleeping Eye, also known as The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, into a feature film. Deathwatch (1980) is set in the near future where disease has all but been eradicated and people generally only die of old age. When it is discovered that Katherine Mortenhoe (Romy Schneider[1]) has an incurable disease TV producer Vincent Ferriman (Harry Dean Stanton) decides to make a live TV reality programme covering the last days of Katherine’s life and her subsequent death. Offered a large sum of money she signs a contract that will make her a celebrity and a media star. But she has second thoughts and goes on the run with an acquaintance called Roddy (Harvey Keitel) who unbeknown to her works for the TV company and has undergone a surgical procedure to implant a camera and transmitter behind his eye’s!

 

Romy Schneider with Harvey Keitel...

......and here with Harry Dean Stanton

Premiered in France in 1979 and made in eight weeks this strange film has a mainly French crew, American and European actors and was filmed in Scotland, a lot of the time in Glasgow because of its Orwellian type locations including Glasgow Necropolis, Glasgow Cathedral, the former Queens Dock and the City Chambers.  It also stars Swedish actor Max von Sydow as Katherine’s husband Gerald and French actress Therese Liotard as Tracy.[2] With its Big Brother scenario it predates modern reality TV and also questions the medias role in society and how privacy can be steadily eroded. The two real positive things about the movie are Romy Schneider’s fine acting and the striking Scottish locations. Little seen in the UK it was re-released in a digital restored print in 2012 but a curio that I’m not quite sure works. Perhaps a second look would help?

The Orwellian look of Glasgow?

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[1] Romy Schneider’s son David appears in the film as the young boy playing with a ball in the park. It was this 14 year old that died from a tragic accident in 1981 and 10 months later Romy was found dead!

[2] Because Therese Liotard could not speak English Tavernier got Julie Christie to voice her part.

Fatherland.

‘Stalinism is not socialism’ ‘Capitalism is not freedom’ are two slogans that appear in Fatherland (1986) a film in which director Ken Loach attacks both the Stalinist form of Communism and questions how free is a so called ‘free society’ showing how the British police are stopping vehicles to turn back working men who want to exercise their legal right to picket in support of a strike and we eavesdrop on a radio talk show and hear how people are having their opinions censored. But the best example of the ‘grass is not always greener’ syndrome is seen through the eyes of Klaus Ditterman a protest singer who because the East German authorities take offence at his lyrics is expelled to the West. Klaus, leaving his wife and son behind, soon realises that he is entering a society that’s as repressive as the one he left behind in the GDR. On entering West Germany he is confronted with an American record label’s attempt to persuade him to sign a contract that will commit his soul to a corporate company that will control his every move and exploit him for their own political and capital gain. Against the record companies express wishes he refuses to sign the contract and travels to England with a French journalist to search for his father, a man who fought in the Spanish Civil War and is still a legend in East Germany but who Klaus has not seen since he was a young child. When he finally meets his elusive parent his prospective on life is completely changed.

Protest singer Gerulf Pannach.

This is the first of Ken’s movies to involve filming outside Britain and the first to make extended use of foreign actors.  Real life folk singer Gerulf Pannach in his one and only feature film plays protest singer Klaus Ditterman. Pannach who had his own problems with the GDR, being expelled from Berlin in the 1970’s after serving nine months in prison for ‘state hostile agitation’. Along with his partner, Christian Kunert he also wrote the music for the film. Paris born Fabienne Babe plays the journalist. You may recognise Christine Rose, who plays Lucy Bernstein the American record label executive, from her role as Angela Petrelli in the TV series Heroes. Channel 4 provided over 50% of the budget with French company Mk2 Productions putting up most of the remainder. 

Which is the most repressive side of the fence?

Ken Loach’s first feature film for five years was the closest he came to making a European art house movie, Fatherland was made at a time in the director’s career when he was at a pretty low ebb following the censorship of his work for television and the banning by the Royal Court Theatre of the stage play Perdition so it was no surprise that the film was not one of his best. Shoot on location in Berlin, four years before the wall came down, and at the University Town of Cambridge in England it was Loach’s first and only collaboration with socialist playwright Trevor Griffith.  I found the script rather muddled and not very dynamic and Loach admits that he had difficulty in working with the playwright who refused to amend it to fit the director’s normal way of working. There were also problems because a lot of the script had to be in German and the German actors had a job transcribing it precisely to the screen.  Singing the Blues in Red, its America release title, is a rather sombre and bleak movie and a missed opportunity that could have been far more powerful if scripted by say Paul Laverty or Jim Allen who incidentally scripted his next film Hidden Agenda (1990) from which Ken Loach’s career never looked back. 

Ken Loach at work in Berlin.