Pollock. 2001. Directed by Ed Harris.

(4/9/01-4/11/01)

I wasn't that crazy about Pollock. I had planned to say that I probably enjoyed it as much as I did because I was so interested in the subject matter. Perhaps the truth is that I already have an image of Pollock and the story of Pollock in my mind and I didn't like the film because it didn't conform to what already existed in the back of my mind.

Portraying Pollock has the same problem inherent in portraying Nixon, though to a lesser degree. Pollock wasn't a continuous television presence, but he is familiar both from photographs and from his words. And, like Richard Nixon, I think that Pollock had more presence and interest than the actor who portrayed him.

Harris plays Jackson Pollock as a sort of freak. I just don't buy it that he was that dysfunctional. Maybe it's true, but I don't accept it. When Lee Krasner first comes to visit Pollock at his studio he can barely say a word to her. She takes him to her family's house for dinner and he acts really . . . well, strange when he hears jazz records. It doesn't ring true, although I suppose I can believe Pollock urinating in the fireplace in Peggy Guggenheim's apartment during a reception. But I wish that scene had been better prepared for.

On the other hand, I think that Mr. Harris did a remarkable job of changing into an older Pollock--the one with flab and a beard. That was a remarkable feat for an actor.

The movie doesn't give any clue as to what caused Pollock to be so dysfunctional. Perhaps there wasn't room in a two-hour movie to explore this in depth, but it was what I wanted to know. And maybe I missed the point. Maybe the film wanted to explore what it was like for a dysfunctional person to have a great talent and what it was like for a woman to see this and accept the role of his caretaker.

Lee Krasner comes across as a much more interesting character than Pollock. She just seems much more alive. When she first walks into his apartment it is clear that she will be the dominant figure in the relationship, leading him around by the nose almost. Of course, Pollock is violent and willful, but Krasner still seems to me to be the dominant one in the relationship.

I liked Marcia Gay Harden as Lee Krasner very much, particularly her Brooklyn accent. Amy Madigan was quite memorable as Peggy Guggenheim. I also liked the young woman who played Pollock's love interest in the final scenes. She was sexy and had a presence. I guess it was the ladies who walked away with the picture.

However, it was Pollock's art and the making of it that really interested me. I found the film enjoyable from that aspect because I am familiar with Pollock's work and MoMA's 1998 Pollock exhibition is still reasonably fresh in my mind. It was exciting to see works that I know sitting around Pollock's studio when Lee Krasner first comes to visit. It was fascinating watching Pollock actually painting Male and Female and the enormous Mural that he did for Peggy Guggenheim's apartment. That was real movie magic.

However, I didn't quite buy it that Pollock got the idea for the drip paintings when paint dripped off a brush he was holding onto the floor or onto a canvas. That didn't ring true, especially since I know that he experimented with the drip technique a couple of years earlier. And from the quotes of Pollock that I know--even though some of them were actually used in the film--I can't really accept that he was as inarticulate as they made him out to be.

I liked very much seeing Pollock draw on Male and Female with a tube of paint. I never guessed that was how he did that "writing" on some of his work. I may try that myself--so I learned something about making art from this film. One other moment that had an impact on me was when Pollock and Krasner were discussing abstraction with reference to one of Pollock's canvases. Krasner insists that abstraction has to be based on nature and Pollock says, succinctly, "I am nature." That says a lot about the nature of his art.

There is a lot that the film doesn't cover. It doesn't mention the doctor who treated Pollock so successfully and whose sudden death had a lot to do with his decline. I suppose that it just wasn't possible to include everything, but I thought that was an important part of the story. And we were shown that Pollock was acting pretty strangely on the last day of his life. But why?

I was impressed with how well-researched this film was. Pollock plays a Billie Holliday record which I know was in Pollock's jazz collection. So that impressed me.

There were a couple of bits of flashy film technique. In one shot taken outside the camera seems to move forward while zooming back, making the perspective change. And during the final drive in the car the soundtrack goes dead, presumably as Pollock is tuning out the voices around him. Both of those moments were interesting to watch, nothing more.