Pollock

Rating:
Summary: Loses a lot on the small screen!
Review: I don't always rush to see movies in current release, but in this case, I'm glad I saw "Pollock" on the big screen. I recently watched it again at a friend's on a verysmall screen. It lost a great deal in the transition.

As others have noted, some of the best scenes in this film are those that show the artist at work. It's to Ed Harris's credit, both as sctor and as director that these shots do not seem forced or hokey. In fact, these sequences have an intensity that is impossible to fake. However, it is precisely at these moments that you want to viewing the film in the best possible setting. If you're watching Harris/Pollock attack a huge canvas on a small screen, the discrepancy is just too jarring.

As a dramatic effort, "Pollock" is not perfect--although it powerfully acted, as nearly everyone who's reviewed it has noted. Harris and Marcia Gay Harden deserved all the acclaim they received, and if you care about such things, you could say Harris "wuz robbed" at last year's Academy Awards. (Didn't the voters realize there'd be plenty of future occasions to honor Russell Crowe?) The film's shortcomings are those typical of biopics--compressing 15 years of an extraordinary life into a two hour film is not easy, so the film's sketchiness is not surprising. Still one does not walk away from the film feeling that one has finally "gotten" Pollock, assuming such a thing is even possible.

And it might have helped if the characters aged a little more. Marcia Gay Harden does appear with glasses in the latter scenes, a concession to aging, but did Lee Krasner never change her hairstyle in all that time? (Who knows, maybe she didn't: perhaps I'm quibbling here.)

"Pollock" reminds me in some ways of another actor's long-in-making labor of love, Robert Duvall's "The Apostle." Neither film was perfect, but from an acting standpoint, both film's provided their stars with what will likely prove the roles of their careers. Most often consigned to co-starring roles in bigger productions, these capable actors finally get to shine in projects that they've developed and sponsored. It's a hard way to guarantee yourself a plumb part, but in the current Hollywood environment, it may be the only way.

Rating:
Summary: wow
Review: absolutely superb. Literally the best acting job I have ever seen by anyone, an oscar-deserving performance by Ed Harris. Marcia Harden is excellent as well.

Rating:
Summary: But is it art?
Review: Some years ago, an older generation gleefully watched an hilarious satire of Jackson Pollock's painting methods. In "Day of the Painter." Pollock was portrayed as a con artist [pardon the pun!] who randomly threw paint on a board and foisted the result off on rich buyers. This farcical depiction of Pollock remained the only valid image of him in the minds of many. Was splattering paint on canvas truly a new art form, or the light-hearted playing of a man who had no professional training in his craft?

Ed Harris has inverted this superficial personification to give us a truer picture of the man who established a new genre of North American painting. Pollock is a supreme example of what good direction, good acting and a valid story can impart to film. Harris doesn't strip Pollock down to examine him viscerally, nor does he give way to any "postmodern" ideals of what a film should depict. Instead, Harris simply portrays Pollock as he was - driven by his art, expressive to extremes and aching for acknowledgment. In giving us this portrait, Harris carefully avoids judgments of either Pollock or the art form he established. With quiet intensity, Harris conveys the agonies Pollock suffered, both in his work and life. It's to Harris' credit that the finest scenes in this film are those of him painting as Pollock did. Every movement of his body, every facial expression conveys the seriousness Harris gave in this, his pet project, for a decade.

Marcia Gay Harden is the deserved winner of her Academy Award for her portrayal of Pollock's wife and colleague. An artist herself, Krasner was likely one of few women who could have sustained the years of Pollock's struggle. Her faith in his work comes through with vivid intensity in Harden's role. Her final break under the years of stress is superbly done by Harden in the near-final scene.

In all, this film is a masterpiece of filmmaker's art. Harris managed the filming with manifest abilities. Directing himself in the painting scenes is hard to imagine. His control of every scene is masterful. He cannot garner enough accolades for his direction of an excellent team. This is a film to treasure. Whatever Harris takes on next will inevitably command attention. One can almost conjure a list of personalities he might deal with in future films. Will biography become his particularly specialty, or was his submersion into Pollock's personality too great to be duplicated with another figure?

Rating:
Summary: Melodramatic showcase for actor Ed Harris.
Review: One wonders why Ed Harris decided to make this film at all. As he even says he does not try to psychoanalyse Pollock -- but instead Harris in an apparent "honest depiction" shows Jackson as a pathetic alcholic, compulsive adulterer and possibly a suicide (and perhaps a murderer?)who is struggling to achieve recognition within the artscene circle.

As far as the trademark style of Pollock, director Ed Harris shows Jackson Pollock stumbling upon a painting technique or imho a novel never-before-done gimmick which the shallow art world chooses to consume.

After viewing the film one is left less appreciative of the art of Jackson Pollock given the way the film depicts him.

Rating:
Summary: Could have been genius with a better director
Review: Pollock (Ed Harris, 2000)

Ed Harris was nominated for an Oscar (for acting, not direction); Marcia Gay Harden won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. That's pretty much all that needs said about this movie; Harris and Harden both turn in career-best roles as Pollock and wife Lee Krasner in this biopic, but the rest of it leads one to wonder what, exactly, Harris the director was trying to get at here.

Pollock, whether you get his art or not, was an interesting character. He spent his life battling a self-destructive urge (and finally succumbing to it in a truly remarkable way), and in the space of fifteen years went from nobody to the finest artist in America to nobody again. Depending on the outlook of the director, the last fifteen years of Pollock's life could be presented as a morality tale on The Evils of Drinking(TM), as an odd quirk worth a second glance, or as a criticism of the fickleness of the art scene in general. Anyone who's watched more than ten films over the span of his life could come up with a list of perfect directors to present the material in any of these modes and bring it off well, but Harris never quite holds onto any of them long enough to show us what path he's trying to take. Thus, when compared to other biopics about artists (most notably Schnabel's _Basquiat_), Pollock looks unfocused and unsure of itself. That forces the viewer to spend more time thinking about the acting skills of Harris and Harden, but it makes the film as a whole less enjoyable.

Worth watching if you enjoy biopics, but not one to go out of your way for. ** 1/2

Rating:
Summary: Simply an excellent film
Review: Before watching this film, I urge everyone to read Naifeh and Smith's superlative and exhaustive biography. Once one is finished with the book, Harris' job as director, producer and actor becomes even more impressive as he and his production team manage to brilliantly capture the book's insights and nuances as they bring Pollock to life on film.

Pollock itself is a work of art in the sense that all its respective elements labor effortlessly in a unified manner that truly reveals universe. The set design and cinematography is perfectly flawless. The use of color and texture makes the film breathe and move in a manner not usually seen. It is so refreshing to see a film that treats its artistic environment and photography like a three dimensional character. Make special notice of The Pollock's house as it evovles from delapidated rustic to pre-Yuppie (for the 1950's!) along with his rise in fame.

I must make a special note about the film's excellent score. It sounds almost as if Harris ressurected Aaron Copeland to score his film. It is a lush, romantic mixture of western themes with a musical manifestation of Pollock's drip painting. I now own the CD and it has become one of my favorite film soundtracks. Why it wasn't nominated for the Oscar is well beyond me.

I cannot possibly say enough about the performances. Harden and Harris are absolutely brilliant. That is all I can say. They both manage to bring to life all the complexities of the characters, warts and all. They truly inspire pity and fear.

At least Harden was rightfully honored with an Oscar. Harris losing to Crowe this year is yet another example of Oscar's relative innanity.

Pollock as a film does not mindlessly canonize Pollock the man. It does not cast him has some helpless little victim. It does not play to the cult of the iconlast. It plays truthfully as it celebrates the creative muse. This is a must see!

Rating:
Summary: Which is more baffling, artist or his art?
Review: There are few paintings in the world like Pollock's "drip" paintings, and a film about how he developed his singular style is from the start fraught with obstacles.

Ed Harris's role as the manic, stymied and self-doubting artist who turned American art on its head is forceful, but I kept wondering, where did Pollock get his moodiness and self-destructive nature? A glimpse of his family life (a devoted mother, brother and various nephews and nieces) says little about how the artist himself fit into the world. He veered between cherishing moments with these loved ones and clashing with his wife (played with an intense, acrid desperation by Marcia Gay Harden); the sudden violence that erupted in their life was mirrored in his art.

The scenes where Pollock applies paint to canvas are some of the best in the movie, and are underscored by subtle, insistent music that echoes the urgency of those spattered blacks, reds and ochres.

Also interesting is the transition between Pollock's Manhattan squalor and his retreat to Long Island respectability: the further he went from the confusion of big city life, the less inner peace he found. The chummy and back-biting art world, it seemed, was already at home in the country. Critics were willing to dump Pollock in favor of newer artists and other trends (Warhol, although absent from the film's chronology, would take over as Modern Art's darling in less than ten years).

Val Kilmer as the abstract expressionist de Kooning gets mercifully little screen time - does he do anything without resorting to a phony glamor? And Amy Madigan as the art doyenne Peggy Guggenheim is both fearsome and laughable. I'll never look at big names on museum walls again without snickering at the idea of Pollock urinating on her posh apartment fireplace.

On the whole, though, "Pollock" ends too early for me. The car crash that killed Pollock and one of his passengers looked like a summary of the man's anger and hopelessness: you're over the hill (at 44), you're a drunkard, your wife is a harridan, so go out in a blaze. There must have been something to the man besides clinical psychosis. All we really have are those magnificent canvases of a tortured mind. It just can't be conveyed in a movie.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: This movie is an interesting look at the life of a great American painter. Pollock was a troubled man and this movie brings that to the forefront along side his creative genius in a very respectable way.

Definately the best I've seen out of Ed Harris in a long time!

Rating:
Summary: impressive biopic
Review: ***1/2 Although the film doesn't exactly startle us with its thesis - that the life of an artist is rarely a happy one - "Pollock" manages to skirt most of the clichés inherent in the "tortured-artist" biographical genre to provide us with a complex study not only of the man himself but also of the woman who stood beside him through most of his troubled life.

Jackson Pollock was, of course, the prototypical "struggling genius" - neurotic, insecure, arrogant, self-absorbed and forever locked in an epic struggle with his own private demons (in Pollock's case, alcoholism). Out of this morass of personal weaknesses, the painter perfected his art - which became a reflection and synthesis of the raw elements that comprised the emotionally chaotic world in which he lived. The film introduces us to the man in 1941 when he is still a virtual unknown living in Greenwich Village, bellowing in an alcoholic rage against the success of Picasso, in whose shadow Pollock seems to be forever hidden away from public view. One day, into his life walks Lee Krasner, a similar, though less gifted, modern artist who detects Pollock's special genius and becomes the future art world celebrity's greatest champion and lover.

Much of the fascination of the film lies in the examination of the complexities of the almost love-hate relationship that develops between the two. On the one hand, we sense that Jackson and Lee provide just the right emotional complement for one another - a shared symbiosis which lays the foundation for an environment in which Pollock's creativity and artistic experimentation can expand and flourish. Lee, for instance, wages a fierce battle to secure Pollock's acceptance among the crème de la crème of New York's art world elite, the result of which is eventual name recognition for Pollock the world over. Yet, Lee pays an ultimate price for her tenacious possessiveness: so all consumed does she become in the life and work of the man who will change the face of modern art that she begins to alienate him and eventually push him away. Unwilling to share him even with a child of their own, she ends up depriving Pollock of the chance of experiencing the joys of fatherhood. The final result is that he is truly left with nothing but his identity as a painter. Thus, as his reputation begins to become eclipsed by newer, younger artists, and as he retreats back into an alcoholic haze after a couple of years of productive sobriety, Pollock's life begins its inevitable spiral downwards into hopelessness and tragedy.

Ed Harris not only stars in the film but directed it as well. He does a superb job on both counts. As Pollock, he supplies the brooding sensitivity as well as the physical intensity that are reflected in the artist's paintings themselves. One never doubts the genuine love Pollock has for Lee, yet always there is the constant threat of physical violence lying latent beneath his placid surface. Marcia Gay Harden matches Harris' performance every step of the way. Beneath her determined, hard-edged exterior lies a woman capable of sincere attachment and a total devotion to both a person and the cause he represents.

Unlike so many films dealing with the lives of artists - in which we see brief glimpses of paint-dabbing followed almost immediately by views of the finished products - "Pollock" provides generous opportunities to see Pollock (i.e. Harris) in action. We sit spellbound as we watch him take a plain white canvas and, step by step, convert it into a work of beauty and art.

If for no other reason, the film is worth seeing just to whet one's appetite and renew one's appreciation for Pollock's work.

Rating:
Summary: Wow
Review: I don't believe I've seen a better performance from anyone than by Ed Harris in Pollock. Harris could retire tomorrow, and this one film would assure him a place as one of the great actors and directors of our time.

It's a movie about an artist, and it's a movie about a drunk. The drunk and the artist happen to be the same man, and the movie doesn't make the mistake of equating the one with the other. Many drunks (who also claim--sometime correctly, sometimes not--to be writers or artists) blame their "higher sensibility and/or sensitivity" to the rest of the world on their drunkenness, when in reality they're likely just plain ill. Stephen King talks about this misinterpretation of alcoholism in his book On Writing.

Much of the emotional impact of the movie stems directly from Pollock's struggle with his inner demons, and the struggle of his friends and family with those same demons. I didn't walk away from this movie with respect for Pollock as a man, although I'm sympathetic to his illness. I certainly left the movie with a respect for him as a man dedicated to his art, and an enormous amount of respect for his apparently long-suffering wife and her devotion to both the man and his art.

This is a movie worth owning, worth savoring with repeated viewings, and worth sharing with friends who might not have already seen it.