Pollock
Screened: 10th November 2003
USA 2000
Directed by Ed Harris
Leading players ~ Ed Harris, Marcia Gay Harden, Amy Madigan.
Synopsis
An absorbing revelatory portrait of the American artist, Jackson Pollock (Ed Harris). The film starts with Pollock enjoying his fame in late 1940s New York, and then flashes back nine years to show him before he has been discovered, living with his brother and rarely showing a painting except in group shows with other painters. A little too fond of the bottle he meets and is taken in hand by a fellow artist, Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden), later his wife, who devotes herself to encouraging his career and introduces him to his future patron, Peggy Guggenheim (Amy Madigan). Krasner moves Pollock out of the city to the Hamptons where he develops the style that will bring him fame and fortune. But fame brings its own problems and fuelled by drink Pollock seems bent on self-destruction).* * * * * *
A labour of love for Ed Harris, who also directs, the film is an intense portrait of a complex and troubled artist who carries the seeds of his own destruction within him. Unusually for an artist’s biopic, the film goes some way to explaining Pollock’s method of working and some of the best scenes show him at the moment of creating his famous "drip" paintings.Harris as Pollock is riveting, whether in the midst of a drunken rage or in the throes of creation and the film as a whole is well-researched. Pollock’s neighbourhood of 1940s Greenwich Village is particularly well drawn. Harris is ably supported by his cast, with Harden turning in an Oscar winning performance as Pollock’s steadfast wife.
A knowledge of Pollock’s works is not essential to the watching of this film which works equally well as a drama as it does as a study of the relationship between the artist and his art.
