The opening three shots of Mike Leigh's enthralling study of the British landscape painter J.M.W. Turner contain all of the elements that make it such a masterly portrait of the artist: in the first, in the shadow of a windmill, two Dutch milkmaids walk towards us, then out of frame, leaving our gaze on a silhouetted figure standing in an uncut meadow. The landscape, needless to say, might have been dressed by Turner.
The next two shots take us closer in, eventually on to the face of the artist himself. It is contorted with effort, as if appalled by the impossibility of the task of bringing reality to life on the canvas.
That Turner did so, and did so with miraculous intensity, is a matter of record. Pleasingly, Leigh has achieved a similar miracle with his film. More than any of the genre that I can recall (Maurice Pialat's exquisite, limpid Van Gogh and Ed Harris' brilliant Pollock are possible honourable exceptions), Mr Turner, thanks in large part to Spall's titanic title-role performance manages to externalise the mind of the artist with a persuasive, sometimes ferocious intensity.
The physicality of Spall's Turner - he gurns and belches and splutters and grumbles - is almost overwhelming.
The famous self-portrait is of a 24-year-old but the characterisation (the film concerns itself with the last 28 of his 76 years of life) accords with contemporary descriptions of him as uncouth and slovenly.
