Pollock

TIFF [2000]

(USA, 2000) 119 minutes
Cast: Ed Harris, Marcia Gay Harden, Amy Madigan, Jeffrey Tambor, Val Kilmer, Jennifer Connelly
Written by Barbara Turner and Susan J. Emswhiller, based upon "Jackson Pollock: An American Saga" by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith
Directed by Ed Harris

THE STORY:

Temperamental Jackson Pollock lives with his brother's family in a small apartment in New York in the late 40s, and has two passions in life: painting and alcohol. He is sought out by young fellow artist Lee Krasner, who is putting together a gallery show and is aware of Pollock's growing reputation. The two begin a romance, and soon, Pollock is courted by renowned art critic Clement Greenberg and curator Peggy Guggenheim. When he invents the technique of Action Painting, he becomes a sensation in the modernist art world and soon, eschews the spotlight by reverting deeper and deeper into a rage of drink, women, and self-destruction.

ROBERT L's REVIEW:

Ed Harris' longtime pet project is another noble, warts-and-all expose of one of this century's most revolutionary and enigmatic artists, and like so many other biopics, it succumbs to the same unwieldy imbalance of biographical restaging and melodramatic conjecture that one can see in countless Movies Of The Week (and which has crippled everything from "Man Of A Thousand Faces" to "Backbeat").

Ed Harris at TIFF

I wish it had relied more the specifics of how Abstract Expressionism impacted 50's America and less on dreary domestic squabbling, but the uneven "Pollock" still earns my recommendation for the way in which Harris captures the vision of a man who perceived the canvas much as a movie screen--as arena for movement, conflict, and confronting one's demons.

A cast of uniformly solid and reliable character actors, including Harris' real life companion Amy Madigan as Peggy Guggenheim, and a goofy Val Kilmer as Willem de Kooning, do little more than efficiently tolerate Harris' many booze-fueled bouts of screaming, swearing, kicking over furniture, and howling like a baby. Marcia Gay Harden, however, matches Harris scene-for-scene as Pollock's wife and fellow artist Lenore Krasner, whose love and support for her rotter of a husband frequently compromised her dignity and own artistic career.

Talk Back

Pollock perfected a technique he termed "Action Painting" in which he dripped paint over the canvas and literally attacked the surface with his brush. He believed the ACT of painting was as important as the finished work, and it's when Harris recreates these extended moments that the film is most arresting. No cutaways, no dissolves--the way in which Harris channels the artist's mindset is uncanny (you can almost see a metamorphosis come over him), and far more of an performance pinnacle than the scenery-chewing drunken rages and pot gut he sports later for Pollock's final days away from the spotlight.

No word on a release date yet, but I've read of a selected-city run in late December to qualify for the Academy Awards. Far too unsentimental for the Academy, and too intimate and leisurely paced for the Xmas movie season, "Pollock" will likely find its target audience on cable and will hopefully fuel a revival of interest in the artist's work.

- Robert L

Talk Back

 

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