Ventura Film Society's Season 7 - Film # 2 of 12

"Mr, Turner" (UK 2014 – Mike Leigh – 150 mins.)

Please join the VFS at 7:15pm on Thursday March 26 at the Century 10 Downtown Ventura to see the 2015 Oscar-nominated film, “Mr. Turner.” Writer/director Mike Leigh has turned his discerning eye on the life of the celebrated British artist J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851), with a richly faceted performance by Timothy Spall.  Known as "the painter of light," Turner’s work is regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism, with some of his works cited as examples of abstract art long before its recognition in the early 20th century. Throughout his long and chaotic private life, Turner travelled, painted, even had himself strapped to the mast of a ship so that he could paint a snowstorm. A popular if anarchic member of the Royal Academy of Arts, Turner was celebrated and reviled by the public and by royalty alike. Mike Leigh sees Turner as a radical and revolutionary painter. His amazing film examines the tension between a flawed individual and the intensely spiritual way Turner had of distilling the natural world into his epic work.