Mike Leigh's biopic is so richly detailed that it feels like a documentary. Spall goes for broke in the outsize title role.

There is little in the way of narrative eventfulness in the film, but Leigh luxuriates in the moments, and provides glimpses of what it takes to be an artist amid the fray.

You leave "Mr. Turner," as with all good fact-based films, wanting to know more about this man and his work - and remembering that beautiful, almost touchable light, on the canvas and on the screen.

Mike Leigh allows us to understand how social and economic class is written as much on the body as it is expressed in language.