I love Mike Leigh films. I skipped church to see Mr. Turner. It is that serious! I want to buy a ticket for Ridley Scott to see Mr. Turner so he can learn how to approach the end of his life and his career with some grace and good humor. I call Mike Leigh the father of mumble core films, but every once in a while, he leaves his expertise and stunts (urban dictionary definition, not the Webster’s) by doing a period piece like Mr. Turner, Topsy-Turvy or Vera Drake. Mr. Turner is breathtaking-at times, I could not tell when I was looking at the film or a painting. Mr. Turner is mostly about the famous British painter, but also about how time, technology and critics make one-time greats into unknown has-beens. Leigh succeeds at showing Turner at his best and worst, sometimes within 5 minutes. He is generous and miserly, loving and anti-social, practical and idealistic. As the painter of The Fighting Temeraire, a symbol of how the once grand fighting ship is being defeated by an inglorious, anonymous steam-powered tug boat, it is unsurprising that Mr. Turner also addresses his professional demise due to technology, but with a sense of humor. Mr. Turner is fracked if it takes him two years to capture nature whereas it takes a camera only two seconds, and he knows it, but he also celebrates it. Mr. Turner knows when he is not in a place of honor, when he fails, when he is ridiculed about the main thing that matters to him, but he still lives and does not reject society. He is still a member of the Royal Academy of Arts and still finds joy in human company of his choice. Mr. Turner teaches us to live fully in our imperfection and failure. Of course, Mike Leigh would probably ridicule me and any other critic for reducing his masterpiece into a few words, and he is right. Mr. Turner is worth a trip to the theater.