Sony Pictures Classics has debuted the trailer and a clip from writer/director Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, starring Timothy Spall, Paul Jesson, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey, Sandy Foster, Karl Johnson, Ruth Sheen, Amy Dawson, Lesley Manville, Martin Savage and Richard Bremmer.
Opening in theaters on December 19, Mr. Turner explores the last quarter century of the great if eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851). Profoundly affected by the death of his father, loved by a housekeeper he takes for granted and occasionally exploits sexually, he forms a close relationship with a seaside landlady with whom he eventually lives incognito in Chelsea, where he dies. Throughout this, he travels, paints, stays with the country aristocracy, visits brothels, is a popular if anarchic member of the Royal Academy of Arts, has himself strapped to the mast of a ship so that he can paint a snowstorm, and is both celebrated and reviled by the public and by royalty.
