Pollock

Rating:
Summary: There's you and the paintings, You Need, You Need! You Need!
Review: Pollock is my favorite Ed Harris Movie, and it's also a good biopic about an artist that's as inspirational and moving as Frida, except it's not as visually inovative. Harris and Marcia Gay Harden are deeply penetrating, and their performances made it more compelling to watch this slow-paced film.
This film chronicles the life and death of America's first internationally-famous modern painter. Harden played Lee Krasner, a fellow artist and girlfriend to Pollock(Harris). She unconditionally supported him and wanted to help him gain recognition and success, even though she had to neglect her own career. Pollock's first show at Peggy Guggenhuiem's gallery was not well received, because people didn't like his style.
Krasner and Pollock got married and moved to the country side, there Pollock painted his best "spatter" work which ultimately propelled him to international stardom in the art world. At that point, he started to unravel emotionally. He started to lose hold of himself and creativity when Krasner refused to have a baby. Then he started to see another woman(Jennifer Connelly). Krasner couldn't take it anymore and decided to leave him unless he stops seeing her......
Marcia Gay Harden gave her most striking performance that was well-worthy of the Oscar she won. She was great in one of the fight scenes with Pollock. It goes like this: She just got out of the bath, and Pollock started to talk to her about making a baby. She gave him a very angry reaction. She shouted at him,"I am not going to bring another life into that! We are painters Pollock, we don't have any money, we don't get by, we struggle! You are a great painter! I believe in Jackson Pollock! There's you and the paintings, you need! you need! you need!......".That was an incredible scene and she was very mesmerizing.
Ed Harris did a great job at directing, acting, and producing of this film. It was a labour of love for him. I was very moved by the scene when he read a letter from Krasner after they had been separated. It was so sad that he was in pieces and nothing meant anything to him anymore. It's admirable that he was welling to put on as much as 30 lbs when his character got very fat from over drinking and eating.
As Krasner had said,"You have done it Pollock, you have cracked it wide open!"

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!!
Review: We all know people who march to their own drummer, those troubled intellectuals who are vexed by mediocrity. Pollack was one of those folks, and Ed Harris is brilliant in this portrayal.
A poignant study of tortured genius.



Rating:
Summary: Jack the Dripper
Review: Ed Harris has only directed one film in his career; this one. He hand-carried the property around town for 15 years. This stirring heartfelt movie is a testament to his grit and creativity. Then he gathered up a group of other producers, and some of his friends, and he directed it and starred in it; probably for scale. Sometimes this formula can lead to a travesty, but not in this case. Harris gave us a lean vision of a great artist and a miserable human being. His father had pointed out to him his physical resemblence to Pollock. But this was only a starting point for Harris. He played Pollock completely, living in the painter's skin, inhabiting his bones.

Roger Ebert wrote,"Harris may not be a painter, but he sure knows how to look like he is painting." This film stands on the shoulders of most all of the other Artist bio-pics. Harris as Pollock was better than Charles Laughton as Rembrandt, better than Anthony Hopkins as Picasso, better than Charlton Heston as Michelangelo; and he was equally as good as Anthony Quinn playing Gauguin, and Kirk Douglas playing Van Gogh in LUST FOR LIFE.

Harris was fearless in portraying the less sympathetic aspects of Pollock's personality; the manic-depression, the alcoholism, the vaulted ego and the bottomless insecurity. Having done his research, Harris was aware that Pollock had come from Wyoming, arriving at New York like a hard-drinking brawling cowboy let loose in a world of soft hands, lisps, and ambiguous sexuality; the pre-war Art world of NYC. Tennessee Williams had know Pollock. It was rumored that he had him in mind when creating the character of Stanley Kowalski.

Ed Harris used it all, integrated it and wore it like a dirty pair of underwear. When Pollock painted, he seemed free of his demons. Harris conveyed this exceedingly well. As Ebert wrote further," Painting was his gift. It lifted him out of his misery." Harris was nominated for an Oscar, and he should have won it.

The first rate script, written by two women, hummed along in perfect pitch, making the female characters more accessible. Pollock needed guidance, management, and manintenance. His wife, Lee Krasner, provided these things. Marcia Gay Harden did her finest work in this role, earning her academy award. She seemed comfortable in the period hairstyles, clothes, and ambience. She moved with assurance of a woman who was the stronger, the wiser, and the most assertive of the pair. She, too, was an artist, but she set aside her art, and became Pollock's muse, lover, mother, and agent.

Jeffrey Tambor stood out as Clement Greenburg, the art critic that first disliked Pollock's work, and later championed it. An underrated actor, Tambor has never been better. Amy Madegan, married to Ed Harris, added a lot to the picture by playing the millionaire socialite patroness Peggy Guggenheim. She startled us with her sweptback coif, and the petty arrogance of a wealthy woman who collected artists like other women collected green stamps. Jennifer Connelly was pretty good as Pollock's young groupie, Ruth Kligman, who would break up his marriage, and then die at his side in the front seat of his Cadillac convertible.

Several other supporting roles were exceptionally cast with strong actors. Bud Cort, who can now play old asthmatic codgers like Walter Brennan used to, was appropriately fussy and effective as Howard Putzel, the Guggenheim majordomo. John Heard as Tony Smith and Val Kilmer as Willen DeKooning provided effective window dressing in well done cameos. Sada Thompson played Pollock;s mother, Stella, like a deer caught in the headlights. She never seemed to fully forgive him for his eccentricities and insensitivities.

This is the best movie ever released about a famous artist. I enjoyed it very much. Any biography about a tragic genius can run astray, tossing us onto a rollercoaster of angst, bathos, and madness. Even though Ed Harris took us to all those places, he let the camera stay focused on Jackson Pollock, and he let us for our own judgements.

Rating:
Summary: "I don't use the accident because I deny the accident."
Review: When interviewed in 1949, shortly after finding enormous success for his "spatter" paintings, Jackson Pollock publicly confronted the issue of whether dripping paint on canvases, rather than putting it there with a brush, creates "accidental" paintings. Originally an abstract expressionist, Pollock's "spatter" style evolved from his intense passion and his need to break free from the stylistic confinements imposed by brushwork. As uncontrolled in his personal life as in his professional life, Pollock was an excessive drinker, inveterate womanizer, and angry rebel against limits of any kind.

Playing the role of Pollock (for which he was Oscar-nominated), Ed Harris, obsessed with Pollock's story and his work for almost twenty years, is also the director of this film and a producer. Depicting Pollock from 1941, when he met and later married Lee Krazner (Marcia Gay Harden), a "good woman painter," through his death in 1955, Harris reveals Pollock's rage, his single-minded determination to be recognized, his rejection of all "rules," his dependence on Krazner's good sense and ability to manage his career, his friendship with collector/patron Peggy Guggenheim (Amy Madigan, Harris's wife) and critic Clem Greenberg (Jeffrey Tambor), and his sober years on Long Island, when he painted his best work. His return to the bottle and his arrogance characterize his final years. Harris spent ten years learning to paint, and the scenes in which Pollock, in a frenzy, paints both expressionistic works and "spatter" paintings, illustrate the artist's spontaneity and ring with truth.

Filming primarily at the museum/home of Pollock on Long Island, Cinematographer Kathryn Himoff lets the characters and setting take center stage, though she frames many scenes for maximum effect, making particularly effective use of doorways and shadows. The Greenwich Village scene in 1943, in which Pollock, suddenly released from his "block," paints in one night a huge mural for Peggy Guggenheim's apartment, his shadow (or self-destructive spirit) holding the brush with him, is both stunning and psychologically revealing. Harden portrays her love for Pollock, her ability to manage his career, and her willingness to subordinate her own career for his, while at the same time revealing a core of iron, a feat which won her an Academy Award.

Harris is brilliant in revealing as much as it is possible for the law-abiding world to know about a man who completely rejects the canons of "civilized" behavior, abiding instead by the canon of creation. It is a selfish world, one that can wreak havoc on those who love the artist and get in his way. Harris's direction, however, especially in scenes in which relatives and friends visit Pollock's studio, needed more control or editing. Mary Whipple

Rating:
Summary: Jackson Pollock Remembered
Review: Ed Harris stars, directs, and produces the great 2000 film "Pollock". It wonderfully portrays the life and turbulances of famed painter Jackson Pollock. This beautiful film shows how Pollock became world-known. However, more than his art is expressed. His struggles and destructive lifestyle represent his art influences and portray who he was. This brilliant plot expresses the emotional side of the events wonderfully. Such depth proves Ed Harris's, who plays Pollock, true fascination. The radiance keeps audiences interested scene by scene, leading to the surprising conclusion. Through everything, the Oscar-nominated performances by Harris and Marcia Gay Harden (she won) play the key role in this masterpiece. Their passion within their characters is expressed beautifully, giving the chain of events the necessary added emotional stance. Such film quality makes "Pollock" sure to please audiences of all kinds. Its emotional value is sure to continue touching audiences as it has.