POLLOCK ***1/2 (out of four) starring Ed Harris, Marcia Gay Harden, Tom Bower, Jennifer Connelly screenplay by Barbara Turner and Susan J. Emshwiller, based on the book "Jackson Pollock: An American Saga" by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith directed by Ed Harris
-a review by Bill Chambers | bill@filmfreakcentral.net
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"How do you know when you're finished making love?" -Jackson Pollock to a LIFE Magazine reporter on recognizing when you've completed a painting
Jackson Pollock's "making love" quote is famous, but in practically the same breath, he said a more constructive thing, "It's like looking at a bed of flowers--tear your hair out over what it means." It took him sixteen words to do as whole dissertations have tried and failed: equate God and abstract art and offer a kind of backhanded comfort to those confused to the point of resentment by the concept. The biopic _Pollock_, actor Ed Harris' directorial debut, reflects the second soundbite in how it accepts Pollock's creations as part of the order of things, and should similarly disarm haters of fine art.
Arguably more than any other living actor, Harris, who also plays _Pollock_, embodies the archetypal Working Stiff, and his blue-collar demystification of Pollock's labour-intensive art, both as performer and director, makes for unpretentious cinema. (From what I know of Harris, he, like Pollock, was not born gifted or lucky; instead, a strong work ethic is the seed of his success.) Granted, it's possible that _Pollock_ will alienate those same viewers perplexed by the imponderable "purpose" of Pollock's splatter series: the common thread between them is a lack of editorializing. The movie _Pollock_ is all purposeful gazes and silent exchanges dotted by tantrums, but the motivations are left to our own perceptions. And it is a sympathetic yet not altogether forgiving film, as illustrated by a disheartening conclusion.
_Pollock_ encapsulates the period in which he fought a losing battle against personal demons (alcoholism, depression, and the general attendant miseries of an artist) while finding a place of subconscious expression. A brief introduction to Pollock's raging drunk side segues into his getting accosted by a fellow New York artist, Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden, awarded a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for this brilliant portrayal), who works from the outside-in, pre-intellectualizing every stroke of her brush. In a scene after they have moved in together and established adjoining studios, she asks what he hopes to achieve on his latest canvas, grilling him about the interplay of cubism and surrealism until he says, "You paint the fucking thing," and leaves in a huff. By the time they wed, she has become his de facto manager; it is form marrying function and chaos marrying discipline, a most harmonious collision. (Krasner denies him a baby, indicating that it would upset the balance.)
Such a union is destined to implode, and I hope I'm not ruining the _Pollock_ experience by saying that it does. While it is never depicted as a very romantic matrimony to start--Pollock and wife channel their passions elsewhere--their symbiosis leaves each other picked dry after several years, and it comes down to Krasner suffering one of Pollock's conniptions too many: "You are killing me! You are killing me! You are killing me!" (Aside: Harris' own wife, Amy Madigan, is unrecognizable and exceptional as gallery diva Peggy Guggenheim.) Pollock himself moves on to dalliances with younger women like Ruth Klingman (the scorching Jennifer Connelly), hoping, one supposes, to catch the revitalizing whiff of youth.
I love Jackson Pollock's stuff and I am enamoured of Harris' _Pollock_ as well. It's scrappy and observant; no coincidence that its minor failings are the occasional invasive flourish, such as Jeff Beal's hummable but no less lamentable score--I can't imagine that Pollock, or anyone, would paint to this music, which puts filling soundtrack voids ahead of complementing the images. One of my favourite sequences is an eerily quiet re-enactment of Hans Namuth shooting that famous Pollock footage in East Hampton, Long Island; the mounting tension is almost comic, as Namuth keeps interrupting Pollock's process to reload his camera or take a dinner break. A more seasoned director might've been too arrogant to admit that not all artists or mediums are created equal.
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