Review: Pollock (2000)
Harvey S. Karten
Reviewed by Harvey Karten
Sony Pictures Classics
Director: Ed Harris
Writer: Barbara Turner, Susan J. Emshwiller, based on the
book "Jackson Pollock: An American Saga" by Steven Naifeh
Cast: Ed Harris, Marcia Gay Harden, Amy Madigan, Jennifer
Connelly, Jeffrey Tambor, Bud Cort, John Heard, Val Kilmer
Those who go to see "Pollock" without knowing much
about art (but knowing what they like) will be tempted at its
conclusion to ask the customary pair of questions about
painters: 1) Do you have to be nuts to be a great, creative
artist? (Van Gogh cut off his ear, you remember, consistent
with his production of terrific, violent works.) 2) Can't my
seven-year-old do that modern stuff with his fingerpainting
set?
Writing and movies are my passion, not colors that stand
still on canvas, so I'm afraid I can't give you the definitive
answer to either query. I'm tempted after seeing Carlos
Saura's imaginative film which opened just weeks before this
one, "Goya in Bordeaux" that a heck of a lot of painters are
not the happiest most stable of people...after all Goya, known
as the first modern painter, was racked by headaches, and
regularly hallucinated about his miserable later years. In fact
Saura's morbid opening scene, that of a large carcass of
meat hanging in a slaughterhouse, stands in perhaps for
Goya's notion that this is just about all that human beings are
or will become.
Let me make an assumption about the audience for
"Pollock." Some, of course, will be art mayvens, a few in
particular fans of the boldly innovative style that Jackson
Pollock used when he split with Picasso, Miro and other
abstract painters and became (like Al Gore) his own man.
Most will go because they heard that Ed Harris is giving the
performance of his career, an almost sure bet for an
Academy nomination. Having quickly and deliberately gained
thirty pounds (as well as growing a beard) for just part of the
story--the portion that shows how dissipated the depressive
painter had become--kind of shows you the commitment the
actor had which led to his monumental performance. That
Mr. Harris is the director surely added to his motivation.
Using a script that Barbara Turner and Susan J. Emshwiller
carved out from the Steven Naifeh bio "Jackson Pollock: An
American Saga," Harris takes us through the ups and downs
in the man's all-too-brief life, and while the director is not too
modest to chew up the scenery, he certainly introduces us to
a LOT of characters--as though inspired by Alan Rudolph's
"Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle"--about yet another
unhappy creative person and her wide circle of friends. While
there are occasional flights into fiction--Pollock's most famous
little quote, "I am nature" is uttered here in answer to his
wife's insistence that one has to paint from nature and not
about mere abstract visions--when in fact he had said this to
someone else.
Opening toward the end of the subject's life, photographer
Lisa Rinzler closes in on the artist as a wasted man, his eyes
gazing sadly into space to expose his emptiness after he had
realized that the best is not yet to come. Having spent a
good part of his life as a drunk (we catch a scene of the man
crawling up to his fifth-floor walkup in Greenwich Village in
1941 after a night on the town), Pollock had given up the
sauce for two years, but went off the wagon in a fit of self-
loathing when, during an episode in which he was being
filmed for a documentary, he realized that he no longer had
it. He had been overtaken by still greater painters and was
no longer the world's golden boy. His most important
relationship is with the woman who would become his wife, a
major painter named Lee Krasner--evoked with a stunning
performance by Marcia Gay Harden . Just weeks after
inviting Pollock to her studio around the corner, the two begin
to live together until Kranser insists that they marry. She
would live to have no small number of reasons to regret the
decision, given her man's fits of anger in which he would
overthrow a table full of food while entertaining family and
friends. (Allegedly Pollock's explosions were cover-ups for
his alarming sensitivity--which persistently led him in the
direction of reclusiveness much like Sean Connery's fictional
writer, Forrester.)
If Pollock were a conventional painter sitting at an easel,
scenes of the man at work would hardly make for interesting
intervals. But once Pollock chucked cubist-like abstractions
for his unique style--he would lay his huge canvas on the
floor and, without touching the brush to the cloth would
almost violently drip the paint onto the material. This led to a
succession of dots which, put together, would represent a
unique American style. Since quiet moments are quite
often broken up by fits of rage and given that the discharge
of the artist at his work is fierce, Ed Harris has the
opportunity throughout the two-hours to deliver nothing short
of an athletic performance well suited for Oscar
consideration. A fine supporting cast including Jeffrey
Tambor as the critic who becomes his pal and in effect
leading publicist; Jennifer Connelly as his young and
energetic girl friend, and especially Amy Madigan (Harris's
real-life wife) as the wealthy and idiosyncratic Peggy
Guggenheim adds to the vivid texture of the work.
Not Rated. Running time: 117 minutes. (C) 2000 by
Harvey Karten, film_...@compuserve.com
--