Now Showing: Pollock

Now Showing
Candid Reviews of Movies Just Hitting The Big Screen

Pollock

by Cole Smithey

In the same way a tap dancer innately understands the percolating syncopation of all jazz music, Ed Harris identifies character rhythms and physical possibilities in dramatic stories. Never in any film about a painter has an actor so completely and fearlessly conquered its subject as Harris accomplishes in Pollock. Harris ferociously puts paint to canvas in recreating the painting style of the most successful American painter of the late 20th century, Jackson Pollock. This biographical film traces Pollock’s troubled rise in the New York art world during the ’40s and ’50s under the guidance of his wife, Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden), and the financial backing of Peggy Guggenheim (Amy Madigan). Harden and Harris harmonize in counterpoint of character motivation as two virtuoso actors in rare form. Apart from a few forgivable supporting character casting faults, Pollock is a rewarding movie that gives an intimate view of the artist who ‘broke the whole thing wide open’ in the art world, only to realize, as many of his critics had, that his discovery was ‘phony.’

This labor of love project for Ed Harris has met with surprising resistance from critics who groan about the film’s negligence as an historically informative movie. There’s also complaint about the melodramatic tone to the work. This audience is missing the punch of the movie, which is to show the kind of man Pollock was as a painter, as a husband, as a brother, and as a tragically flawed human being. It’s a movie that’s as much about the social climate of a period in American history as it is about the birth of Abstract Expressionism. Pollock was fortunate to have the support of powerful women like Lee Krasner and Peggy Guggenheim and the movie reflects their influence. Pollock’s and Krasner’s marriage provides a nucleus for the story.

In one especially revealing scene in their East Hampton home, Pollock is inspired to suggest to his wife that they should have a baby together. Krasner lets fly with a list of reasons, related to Pollock’s temperament and drinking binges, why they should not have a child. It becomes obvious in the scene the insecure child that Pollock remained over the years. Krasner’s brutal honesty emphasizes the degree of Pollock’s emotional underdevelopment. Although Krasner was capable of promoting Pollock as an agent and manager, she was doomed to be the primary object of his escalating abuse. The vehement and cruel arguments the couple have, rekindle images from plays like “Look Back In Anger” or “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

The same Pollock who would disrupt his sister-in-law’s dinner table with a violent alcohol-fueled drumming imitation of Gene Krupa, would later sit in silence for months in front of a large white canvas contemplating the first brush stroke. When Harris as Pollock finally does approach the giant blank space (commissioned by Peggy Guggenheim for her apartment), each gesture and stroke has been thoroughly thought out in advance. It’s the first astonishing moment in Harris’s portrayal when we actually see the artist creating. Harris’s act of creating Pollock’s character is a direct corollary to a painter’s technique. Harris puts his acting and painting impulses under the same restraints of discipline, inspiration, and execution. There are very few actors capable of such dedication and mastery of craft as to walk on the hot coals of bold creation and come away so satisfied.

One of the most admirable aspects of the film is the domain of character given to Pollock’s paintings themselves. Harris (as director) is careful to use Pollock’s prolific number of paintings as an extension of the artist’s soul. It’s interesting to note that Harris was unable to secure the rights to use any Jackson Pollock paintings for the filming. Instead he employed five expert painters (dubbed ‘the Jackson Five’) to recreate paintings similar to Pollock’s style. Color and ideas permeate the movie, giving a running commentary on Pollock’s subconscious life. The paintings add a dimension that speaks as loudly as any other character in the movie.

Jackson Pollock’s life was shortened by a self-loathing contempt exacerbated by success. Ed Harris’s Pollock accurately characterizes, without sentimentality, the ignorance and innocence of a talented painter whose fate was to explode the art world with huge ‘drip’ paintings done in “Action Painting.” It is a keen commentary on value, vulnerability, passion, and loyalty.