Cast: Ed Harris, Marcia Gay Harden, Amy Madigan, Jennifer Connelly, Jeffrey Tambor, Bud Cort, John Heard, Val Kilmer
Director: Ed Harris
Producers: Fred Berner, Ed Harris, John Kilik
Screenplay: Barbara Turner and Susan Emshwiller, based on Jackson Pollock: An American Saga by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith
Cinematography: Lisa Rinzler
Music: Jeff Beal
U.S. Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Ed Harris' Pollock represents the latest opportunity for an accomplished thespian to step around to the other side of the camera. In addition to donning the director's cap, Harris also wears a pair of other hats - he is one of the movie's producers and he is also the star. For a production that has been whispered about on the grapevine for years, Pollock turns out to be a bit of a disappointment. In essence, it is an erratically paced, conventional biographical treatment of the life and loves of modernist painter Jackson Pollock, who blew through the New York art scene during the 1940s and 50s before dying in a car crash. As with many great artists, Pollock was an undiagnosed manic-depressive whose life was characterized by periods of self-destructive binges followed by giddy bouts of joy and creativity.
Harris' movie chronicles Pollock's life in a straightforward, adequate manner without giving us much insight into the man behind the art. Other than depicting his wild mood swings, there's not too much to this cinematic representation of Pollock. Even after spending two hours in his company, we don't understand what makes him tick. The other characters who drift into and out of his life, including his wife of 15 years, Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden), and art collector Peggy Guggenheim (Harris' real-life wife, Amy Madigan), aren't better illustrated - they need filling in. The result is that Pollock is more like an incomplete sketch than a detailed portrait.
The best scenes in this film are those that illustrate the creative process. They're wild and energetic, and it's during those sequences that Harris shows promise as a director. Colors are splashed on the canvas as Pollock tunes out the outside world to concentrate exclusively on his work. Harris' use of unconventional camera angles and quick cuts invigorates these scenes. Unfortunately, most of the movie lacks this drive, and when Pollock focuses on the tortured artist motif, which is most of the time, it is derivative and is unappealing.
The subject of Jackson Pollock has been something of an obsession for Harris, who worked steadfastly for more than a decade to bring this story to the screen. Initially, he had planned only to produce and star in the project, but, with the encouragement of co-producer Fred Berner, he agreed to take the reins as director. Regardless of how difficult his job behind the camera was, Harris' work in front of it does not suffer. His portrayal of the title character is precise and effectively realized. We see in Harris' performance a man who is driven by unseen forces to great highs and great lows. It's just a pity that the movie doesn't delve more deeply into exactly what those unseen forces were, and why Pollock should be regarded differently from the hundreds of other great artists whose lives followed essentially the same trajectory as his.
© 2000 James Berardinelli