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| An early scene in Pollock, shows Ed Harris (as Jackson Pollock) painting on a canvas in his pre-splatter days as Marcia Gay Harden, playing his reluctant, abuse-taking painter wife, talks around him. "You're not quite surrealist because....and you're not quite using expressionism because...and your use of shape doesn't exactly reflect cubism...," she rambles on, trying to understand her husband's inventive painting style. Eventually he stops, midstroke, looks her way and says, "I'm just painting." Pollock is the story of American painter Jackson Pollock, a founding father of the "I could do that" school of modern art who revolutionized the medium in the decade after WWII. True to the above scene, Ed Harris depicts in his movie a portrait of an artist confined. Pollock was great because he was creating without precedent. Artists spend so much of their time being compared and estimated in terms of those who have come before them- Picasso is an oft-referenced example of this for Jackson- but true to himself and to his work, Jackson Pollock was "just painting." Subsequently, the world took notice. If you're not previously familiar with Pollock's popular modern "splatter art." I suggest you venture to your nearest modern art museum and marvel at his unique vision. A contemporary of Caulder and DeKooning (played in cameo in the movie by Val Kilmer), Jackson Pollock is today thought to be America's greatest contribution to art in the twentieth century and rightfully so. |
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| Whether you know him or not, though, the movie dedicated to his memory is no less than a beautiful first step for first-time director Ed Harris. More than a decade spent in the brilliant shadow of bigger marquee draws, Harris has become a respected member of Hollywood's actorly community. Notable performances include The Truman Show and Apollo 13, which both received Academy Award nominations. I say it's been a longtime coming, too, that he is finally in a lead role that properly challenges his undeniable abilities. It may be only understood that he would have had to direct the picture himself before somebody gave him the chance, unfortunately. What Harris brings to the project is his unique understanding of the artistic process. As an actor, he understands what it is for an artist to create. As Pollock and in telling his story, Harris focuses on the genuine art of creating art, itself. The other choice scene that stood out to me featured Pollock being filmed by a moviemaker. The clash of a painter's spirit with a director's structure is immediate and uncomfortable. The director runs out of film as Pollock is painting and calls cut, but for Pollock there is no stop-and-go to painting and he is unable to hear the director's cries. Pollock, with his out-of-the-box ideas and his lust for creation are constantly at odds with his confined and habitual life. Note the pervasive use of straight lines surrounding Harris throughout the movie, the frames of his pictures, themselves, at times seem to represent a four-sided cage holding Pollock's very identity. Also look for the use of the famous Hitchcock shot where the background appears to be coming in closer on the unmoving foreground subject. (I argue that this is probably only the second time-EVER- that I've seen this used for appropriate purposes, the other being in Jaws with Roy Scheider) The world, in this case, seems to literally be closing in on him and he cannot stop it. The other notable feature of this movie that I would clearly attribute to Harris's involvement is the use of other actors, like himself, who have been, in the past, relegated to subpar supporting roles. Here, standbys and second bananas like Jeffrey Tambor, Jennifer Connelly, Bud Cort, and, of course, the amazing and now-Oscar nominated Marcia Gay Harden all are given the chance to shine. Biopics generally do not sit well with me. Sure, they tell a whole person's story from beginning to end, but many times I feel like perhaps a story may not have been worth telling. Or perhaps they focused too much on the few elements of a celebrity that everybody already knows back and forth and gave us nothing new to work with. Exceptions to this rule seem to have all been written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (namely Ed Wood, The People Vs. Larry Flynt, and Man on the Moon). All of these movies take us out of the birth, middle age, death format and instead present a narrative that pits our reluctant hero against the world that seeks to vilify him in his own time. It is of note that they are also now behind the much-talked-about Liberace biopic. Now, I am happy to add Pollock to this list. Like those other films, Jackson Pollock, in no way, was immediately recognized for his work. In fact, the majority of the movie is spent in struggle for success, scraping to get by. A period piece that never forces its historic convention and detail in your face as so many are inclined to do, Pollock is the rare film that succeeds in its narrative on both a performance and conceptual level. Especially in understanding and portaying an artist's undying devotion to his craft, Pollock truly shows the process of creating Art and "art" for both an often-times unappreciative audience and for one's self. Jackson Pollock is an American treasure and this film is his biography, an artist's tale as told by an artist. Go see this movie. By Dan $9.50/$10.00 |