Pollock

I think it is very hard in general to make a "based on a true story" sort of film, that alone can clamp a pretty heavy anchor to your ankles. Moreso when that true story is one that means a lot to you as Ed Harris has said about Jackson Pollock's biography.

Based upon those precepts, I feel Harris succeeded, however I cannot say this film is an unqualified success. It is sprawling, but unlike Pollock...for cinema circulation, Harris could not stretch his canvas so wide. He gets over two hours here...but I suspect he could have filled six easily.

Based upon early buzz when this came out, including the snippet shown at the Oscars for Marcia Gay Harden, I had trepidation that this would be reduced to a shout and spittle film; that the rage and angst of Pollock and Krasner would be the story. Certainly this is one aspect presented, but not the sole one.

Interestingly to me, it seemed that the more halcyon Pollock's life was, the better his exploration of his art. I went in expecting that alcohol-oiled turmoil would be presented as the key to complicated creation. An artist must suffer and so on.

This shows that while I was familiar with Pollock, I was not that familiar. I could recognize his later chaotic, laced and dripped paintings...but I did not know anything about his personal life.

But in the course of two hours, I did enjoy...

1) Seeing a progression in Pollock's paintings. I had not seen many of his earlier works that had more blocks to them, that were more easily seen as assemblages of images. The way these were filmed, in the act of creation was well done here. Same is true for the latter works.

2) The importance of Pollock's family. I loved seeing his Mother come to the openings. I did not know that two other brothers also painted; Sande alone seems to understand Jackson's talent and torment. Their relationship could have made a film of its own.

3) Jeffrey Tambor's portrayal of Clem, a critic/king-maker of sorts. Us posters here, run the risk of being posers as well. And I think the best of us realize how subjective our comments are, a function of when we watch films, and who we are with, or how we are feeling as much as the films themselves.

4) Following on that notion, to me one thread of "Pollock" is how the circle of critics destroys artists with either persecution or praise. It is not a revelation, that much art is highly personal, both for the purveyor, but painfully so for the artists. Not a revelation, but still worth repeating...

When we see Pollock "drunk" on his ascent, reading from an Italian magazine during a family reunion, that really got to me. Maybe that was more dangerous than alcohol. Even if that critical acceptance is not essential, eating is. Another thread alluded to in this film, how to "work" and to live as an artist.

That scene also drove home the obsessive nature of being an artist, how it is hard at the same time to be a brother, or uncle, husband or perhaps impossible to be a father. Thus that obsession helps to contrast Sande and Jackson, and certainly sets up the power of Marcia Gay Harden's performance. Krasner too is an artist, who has had some success. She retains her name, and her dreams, but fully embraces Pollock, and Pollock's artwork. Her support of him, while aware of her limits, was presented without martyring her. She was not a saint wandering into Pollock's hell.

5) Talking to an artist about his/her obsession is problematic. They are already communicating in their chosen medium, and presumably they are communicating that way as it is easier than using words. I thought the interview with Life magazine in this film, and Pollock's notion of viewing his art as one views a field of flowers helped me. Maybe that was obvious to others, I think that way in music/sound...but in art too often I am hunting for images, for mirrors to our world.

The radio interview that Pollock conducted, halting and awkward could have underscored the travails of talking about art, or it seemed like he was trying to read from a manifesto of sorts (perhaps in real life one exists). Finally, the documentary film is painted as an undoing of Pollock. Fascinating as we ourselves are watching a film about Pollock. It's as if Ed Harris the actor in character could be talking to Ed Harris the film auteur.

The documentary film was to Pollock, what a zoo can be to a wild animal. The habitat corrupts the inhabitant. How Pollock puts on his shoes, when he's done painting, all control is lost...the private process made public, is made impure.

No, that's not the point to this film. If you are looking for a film with one tidy point, go elsewhere. But for an abridged but admirable biopic on Jackson Pollock, with many tangled and tantalizing threads...this is one to rent. And now a book for me to read. Rarely do I watch the deleted scenes and wish they had been in the film, as I did in this case.

There was a great shot early in the film where Pollock is pacing before the mural commissioned by Peggy Guggenheim. From the plot, we know he's worried about looms before him, and we get eerie shots of his shadow projected on the empty canvas to reinforce that. Harris too may have felt this was an ominous undertaking, I hope he pleased himself as he did me.

7/10

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.

Ed Harris has taken the biopic to a new level. Although the skeleton of the film is no more than the troubled life of an alcoholic struggling with fame, the power of the acting and sequence of the film take it a step further. The relationship between Krasner and Pollock mirrors that of Stanley and Stella Kowalski but Krasner is a much stronger character and Marcia Gay Harden more than deserved the oscar she received for the part. The only part that concerned me was the explanation Harris chose to show Pollock's progression to his drip paintings. The arbitrariness of the "revelation" seems stretched to me and suggests that it is actually known how Pollock made that movement. All in all, the movie is excellent and worth seeing.

Just be careful - I cringed every time he got into a car...

a good film, though perhaps i was expecting a little more. The psyche of a troubled artist is somewhat predestined these days and maybe it is just that our assumptions are correct as they are all portrayed in a predictable way. If this is how the artist truly was then then Harris could have done nothing different, it just seems a little distant. I didn't feel at one with the artist, i couldn't sympathise with him or feel his pain. The 'intellectual' artistic debates and gendredising continuously used by his wive left me with no sympathy for her. She appears desperate from the first scene pretentiously trying to be involved with the next big thing. The most depressing part of this film is that two people can be stupid enough to waste their lives on each other without searching for the happiness which they truly seek. The emphasis is on Pollock as a man whereas i would like to see more of him as an artist, did his individual paintings have meaning or did he just do them out of hate for the world.... i guess i didn't feel you see his mind and its true agony's, maybe he was just generally mad at the world.

Really not a bad film for what it is, just to me it lacked true emotion.

sio

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.