Pollock

As heavy and darkly textured a film as any one of his masterpieces, director and star Ed Harris takes us into the tortured, inebriated world of abstract painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)and leaves us assured that Pollock is a certifiable candidate for the Hall of Fame "self-destructive genius" award, joining the illustrious, besotted ranks of Ernest Hemingway, Hank Williams, John Barrymore, Helen Morgan, et al. True, when has Hollywood ever bothered to put on cinematic display a gifted artist who wasn't a poster child for Betty Ford? We usually reserve well-adjusted geniuses for quieter, more tasteful retrospectives on cable TV.

Harris spares no time in letting us know that Pollock is a crude, mindless, gifted mess veering toward unmitigated disaster, taking everything and everyone down with him as he does. Amazingly, in his brutally brief 44 years, Pollock manages to find, with a man-child brilliance, his life's destiny as a master of artistic expression and interpretation and the accidental inventor of the drip-action technique. Harris painstakingly chronicles the little known details of this wretched genius who somehow learned how to free up his own artistic mind while confine the rest of his world to an absolute hell.

The actor/director wisely manages to avoid most of the pitfalls characteristic of these grand bios of agony and angst. In a stark, no-holds-barred performance, he lays the character out like it is -- unredeeming, hopeless, desperate, supremely gifted, yet intriguing. Its a daunting, fully etched performance that, in lesser hands, could have been one long cliche. He doesn't toy with the audience by thinking had the right circumstances come along for Pollock (and they DID come along with wife and caretaker, Lee Krasner) he could have somehow prevailed. Harris is quite believable, losing himself in the painter while showing off his researched skills with a brush. It's a true labor of love and it shows.

Marcia Gay Harden's self-sacrificing Krasner breathes life not only into Pollock but the film itself. Harden, in a rich, flashy portrayal, is mesmerizing as one artist compelled to save another, giving interesting dimension to a woman whose reasons are not totally pure and selfless. Amy Madigan (Harris' wife in real life) makes the most of her few scenes as the eccentric museum maven Peggy Guggenheim, while Val Kilmer appears in an odd, thankless cameo. Harris and Harden were both deservedly Oscar-nominated for their work here.

Yet, problems do creep into the film. While Harris pours his heart and soul into this show (a ten-year pet project, so they say), Pollock's "before life" is never set up to demonstrate why Pollock became such an inveterate drunk and monster. As such, little sympathy can be mustered, holding viewers at bay. Moreover, a couple of manipulative scenes also seem to be thrown in merely to punctuate the already well-worn theme of Pollock's misery and desolation. Less is more in this case. For the most parts, however, this little film succeeds.

Until now, little attention has been paid to the artist Jackson Pollock. Harris rectifies this injustice, as reprehensible as some of it is, with unsparing honesty, dedication and precision.

Films like "Pollock" always leave me at a loss when I have to describe them to others. For one thing, it's long been a labor of love for director / star Ed Harris, which maybe causes me to have more sympathy for the picture than I should -- after all, I'd hate to ream a project that he's spent so much time and energy developing. For another thing, I usually find biopics a bit crippled because, in most cases ("Pollock" included), I already know the plot, and without the plot to get lost in, I'm left to look at little things like, you know, the acting, writing and directing. Lucky for Harris (and my conscience), then, that the acting is uniformly great, the direction is mostly seamless (and downright kinetic at times), and the writing, while not being great in the "Casablanca" sense of the word, serves the story well. "Pollock" dodges all the pitfalls that often turn biopics into boring history lessons.

The film picks up with Jackson Pollock the Unsuccessful Drunk (Harris), dabbling in surrealist painting and proclaiming Picasso to be a fraud. There's enough promise in his work, though, for him to gain a girlfriend, Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden); a benefactor, Peggy Guggenheim (Amy Madigan); and a professional critic, Clement Greenberg (Jeffrey Tambor), who champions his work in print. From there we watch Pollock take the express train to art world superstardom, becoming one of the world's foremost abstract painters.

The fly in the ointment, though, is Pollock's notorious temper, aided and abetted by his equally notorious alcoholism. Life in New York City is doing his personal life no favors, so he and Krasner move to the countryside, and it's here that he stumbles upon his "drip method" of painting, granting him another wave of fame and recognition. It is this sequence, in which Pollock makes his pivotal discovery, where Harris's talent as a director comes to the fore. Although we're aware that we're watching an actor perform a discovery that was made by someone else more than fifty years ago, it's an exciting, dynamic moment as Harris dances around his canvas, flicking paint from his brush in a blur of motion. It doesn't come off as staged or phony, but as a moment of genuine discovery, and for those moments we might as well actually be watching Jackson Pollock revolutionize the art world.

From there, though, ego, alcohol, and the mechanics of change all prove to be Pollock's undoing, leading, of course, to his untimely demise. Through it all, Harris seethes with a feral intensity, giving a performance that should rightfully win him an Oscar (and check out the dramatic weight gain at the end. Tom who?). Harden, his co-nominee, is also excellent (although she's stuck uttering lines like, "You've done it, Pollock. You've cracked it wide open."). In lesser hands, Krasner could be just another version of the screeching, wailing, put-upon wife, but Harden bolsters the anguish with a fine layer of anger; the torment of a woman who loves the person causing her misery, but who is unwilling to let go of the principles which led her to enter and maintain the relationship on her own terms.

"Pollock" ultimately succeeds because we know how it will end, we clearly see how unpleasant and deluded the artist had become, and still we can't look away. Harris's labor of love serves as an auspicious debut for someone who, at this stage, seems just as skilled behind the camera as he is in front of it.

Jackson Pollock (Ed Harris) is famous with a Life magazine cover in 1950. The movie flashes back to 1941. He's a drunk staying in Greenwich Village with his brother and pregnant wife. Artist Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden) shows some interest and becomes his lover/supporter. His brother moves to Connecticut. Jackson breaks down which is why he can't be drafted into the war. Lee takes Jackson home acting more and more like his manager. His work eventually gains the attention of art collector Peggy Guggenheim (Amy Madigan) who gives him an one-man show in 1943. Lee and Jackson decides to move to a country house on Long Island away from the drinking and doing more work. His paintings are still not selling and then the Life article happens. Lee and Jackson have a roller-coaster relationship and then he has an affair with Ruth Kligman (Jennifer Connelly).

Ed Harris directs a mostly straight forward biopic of Jackson Pollock with a few fascinating scenes of painting sessions. His directing style doesn't necessarily project Jackson mental breakdowns but his acting is able to bridge the gap. Ed Harris is not the most imaginative director visually but it is overcome by good actors doing good work. It is a good debut directorial effort.

Pollock (2000)

There's no question this is a well made film, and based pretty much on truth, and an interesting truth--the life of a great Abstract Expressionist. Some would say the greatest of them all.

For myself, this isn't enough, and I know this is me. I'm an art critic and professor of Art in my real life, and I'm never very patient with movies about artists. The reason isn't that there are inaccuracies, but that there is a subtle or not-subtle goal of aggrandizing the subject. This reaches a beautiful but, again, romanticized, peak when Pollock makes his famous break into true gestural, raw work in a large commissioned piece for Peggy Guggenheim (who is portrayed, oddly, as a shy and dull sort, which I've never pictured). Then later he makes his drip works. And then he dies, again over dramatized and made aesthetic, as tragic and ugly as it had to have been in life.

If you want to really get into Pollock's head, especially if you aren't already a fan (I love Pollock's work), this is a convincing movie. At the helm as both director and playing the artist is Ed Harris. He is especially believable as a painter, which is something of an important point. This isn't like those movies about musicians where the actor is clearly not playing. Harris actually paints the darned thing, the big masterpiece, on the cusp of the drip works. I don't know if Harris was drinking, too, but he's a good drunk, and of course Pollock was a better drinker than a painter, even.

It's a cheap shot to say a movie could have been shorter, but this one sure would have propelled better with less atmosphere, less filler that is meant to create his life but is interesting only as an illustration of historical facts. It wore me thin for those reasons. Again, it might be a matter of how much you can get sucked into the given drama that is Jackson Pollock's life. It was quite a life, crude, untempered, brave, and immensely connected to what matters as an artist.

Although the film doesn't exactly startle us with its thesis – that the life of an artist is rarely a happy one – `Pollock' manages to skirt most of the clichés inherent in the `tortured-artist' biographical genre to provide us with a complex study not only of the man himself but also of the woman who stood beside him through most of his troubled life.

Jackson Pollock was, of course, the prototypical `struggling genius' – neurotic, insecure, arrogant, self-absorbed and forever locked in an epic struggle with his own private demons (in Pollock's case, alcoholism). Out of this morass of personal weaknesses, the painter perfected his art – which became a reflection and synthesis of the raw elements comprising the emotionally chaotic world in which he lived. The film introduces us to the man in 1941 when he is still a virtual unknown living in Greenwich Village, bellowing in an alcoholic rage against the success of Picasso, in whose shadow Pollock seems to be forever hidden away from public view. One day, into his life walks Lee Krasner, a similar, though less gifted, modern artist who detects Pollock's special genius and becomes the future art world celebrity's greatest champion and lover.

Much of the fascination of the film lies in the examination of the complexities of the almost love-hate relationship that develops between the two. On the one hand, we sense that Jackson and Lee provide just the right emotional complement for one another – a shared symbiosis which lays the foundation for an environment in which Pollock's creativity and artistic experimentation can expand and flourish. Lee, for instance, wages a fierce battle to secure Pollock's acceptance among the crème de la crème of New York's art world elite, the result of which is eventual name recognition for Pollock the world over. Yet, Lee pays an ultimate price for her tenacious possessiveness: so all consumed does she become in the life and work of the man who will change the face of modern art that she begins to alienate him and eventually push him away. Unwilling to share him even with a child of their own, she ends up depriving Pollock of the chance of experiencing the joys of fatherhood. The final result is that he is truly left with nothing but his identity as a painter. Thus, as his reputation begins to become eclipsed by newer, younger artists, and as he retreats back into an alcoholic haze after a couple of years of productive sobriety, Pollock's life begins its inevitable spiral downwards into hopelessness and tragedy.

Ed Harris not only stars in the film but directed it as well. He does a superb job on both counts. As Pollock, he supplies the brooding sensitivity as well as the physical intensity that are reflected in the artist's paintings themselves. One never doubts the genuine love Pollock has for Lee, yet always there is the constant threat of physical violence lying latent beneath his placid surface. Marcia Gay Harden matches Harris' performance every step of the way. Beneath her determined, hard-edged exterior lies a woman capable of sincere attachment and a total devotion to both a person and the cause he represents.

Unlike so many films dealing with the lives of artists – in which we see brief glimpses of paint-dabbing followed almost immediately by views of the finished products – `Pollock' provides generous opportunities to see Pollock (i.e. Harris) in action. We sit spellbound as we watch him take a plain white canvas and, step by step, convert it into a work of beauty and art.

If for no other reason, the film is worth seeing just to whet one's appetite and renew one's appreciation for Pollock's work.