Mr. Turner and "The sun is God!"

Bitter out there today and worse tomorrow - punishingly cold all over North America. A good day for taxicabs.

Yesterday, Eli and his mother visited. Here is my advice to grandparents of young children: acquire something called a Plasmacar. Ours was given to us by generous friend and former student Janice, along with a huge bag of clothing and books her kids had outgrown; it provided great joy last Xmas day and has continued to do so. It's a stable four-wheeled contraption that's strong and big enough for two - and my grandson decided yesterday that he wanted to play chauffeur. On his way into the living-room to get more books - "Come, Blamma," he said, patting the back of the seat, and I lowered myself onto the back of the vehicle and he drove us into the living-room to get books, steering magnificently. Four times, four trips.

Getting off the Plasmacar was difficult. This is why I go to the Y, was my main thought as I struggled creakily to my feet. The best ride ever - being driven by my grandson from the kitchen to the living room, replete with vroom vroom and screeching brake noises made by Blamma. I wonder if one day I'll embarrass him as I embarrassed my children. Let's hope not.

Today I went (by cab, and not a Plasmacab) to see Mr. Turner. In 1981, when my ex-husband and I were newly together, a friend of his visited, a young British director writing a book about someone we'd never heard of called Mike Leigh, whose work in the theatre involved lengthy improvisations. Now Mr. Leigh is a film director of great and well-deserved esteem - his Vera Drake and Topsy-Turvy are wonderful films.

And so is this one - indisputably great, perhaps the most beautifully shot film I've ever seen, only right in a biopic about a master of light. It's long, perhaps a shade too long though I can't think of a scene I'd cut. And it's odd in that it deals with a genius who is a rough snorting boor with few social graces who treats his wife and children and his housekeeper poorly. And yet also a sensitive, successful, respected man and a courageous, ground-breaking and hard-working painter. Fascinating.

The film provides a series of character studies, too, of names we know, like Constable and Ruskin, and others we don't, like the crazed egotistical painter Haydon - all so real because Mike Leigh continues to improvise with actors, who are all as solid and comfortable in their roles as it's possible for an actor to be.

For me, it's a film about a golden age in England, just as the railway is arriving and the country is about to change forever. References to the slave trade and the Napoleonic wars, and a brief encounter with an unappreciative Victoria and Albert, situate us in historical time. The interiors are breathtaking and full of artifacts of British life I know my mother would have wept to see - vases, jugs, pewter plates and mugs, platters and dishes, she would have recognized them all. The countryside is a pastoral dreamscape, the seaside is so vivid you can smell the air and the fish - Britain of the early to mid-1800's lovingly recreated, seamless, nothing out of place.

Confession: I've never liked Turner's work - too wishy washy, all those filmy pink, brown and gold skies and seas. After the film, I still am not crazy about his paintings, but I understand much more about the man and his times. I loved this film.

PS Just saw that a dear friend I've not yet met, Theresa Kishkan, has also just posted a review of the film on her blog, to the left. As sensitive and thoughtful as ever, Theresa.