Mike Leigh Wants to Paint a Picture of J.M.W. Turner

As his film Another Year continues to build hype toward awards season, director Mike Leigh is already on to “discussing” his next project. As he told L.A Times, Leigh is gathering interest and funding towards a period film surrounding the life of the influential 19th century British landscape artist, J.M.W. Turner. Many of Leigh’s films, such as Another Year and Secrets & Lies, tend to focus on the working, middle-class, however, a film about Turner, would fall more along the lines of Leigh’s two period films – Vera Drake and Topsy Turvy. About creating a film solely about an artist, Leigh stated, “I’d like to paint a bigger picture. The conceit there was to take these famous people and subvert the whole thing by saying they’re real people with problems and issues and relationships and vulnerabilities.”

Gist: Joseph Mallord William Turner was a English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Considered a controversial figure in his day, Turner is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivaling historical painting. He is commonly known as “the painter of light” and his work is regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism.

Worth Noting: Leigh is known not only for turning out award-worthy films, but also using a method of little scripting and a lot of rehearsal which result in emotionally intense stories and powerful characters. A Turner film, Leigh stated, would not follow the director’s usual inexpensive filmmaking style, “With ‘Topsy-Turvy’ we were able to cut the budget by cutting the exteriors. You don’t make a film about Turner and cut the exteriors. This is a guy who strapped himself to the mast of a ship to paint a storm. He’s for real. So, yes, expensive.”

Do We Care?: Have you ever seen a Mike Leigh film you could instantly forget about? Me neither.