Pollock (Special Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Pollock (Special Edition)
Movie Review: But is it art?
Summary: 5 Stars
Some years ago, an older generation gleefully watched an hilarious satire of Jackson Pollock's painting methods. In "Day of the Painter." Pollock was portrayed as a con artist [pardon the pun!] who randomly threw paint on a board and foisted the result off on rich buyers. This farcical depiction of Pollock remained the only valid image of him in the minds of many. Was splattering paint on canvas truly a new art form, or the light-hearted playing of a man who had no professional training in his craft?Ed Harris has inverted this superficial personification to give us a truer picture of the man who established a new genre of North American painting. Pollock is a supreme example of what good direction, good acting and a valid story can impart to film. Harris doesn't strip Pollock down to examine him viscerally, nor does he give way to any "postmodern" ideals of what a film should depict. Instead, Harris simply portrays Pollock as he was - driven by his art, expressive to extremes and aching for acknowledgment. In giving us this portrait, Harris carefully avoids judgments of either Pollock or the art form he established. With quiet intensity, Harris conveys the agonies Pollock suffered, both in his work and life. It's to Harris' credit that the finest scenes in this film are those of him painting as Pollock did. Every movement of his body, every facial expression conveys the seriousness Harris gave in this, his pet project, for a decade.
Marcia Gay Harden is the deserved winner of her Academy Award for her portrayal of Pollock's wife and colleague. An artist herself, Krasner was likely one of few women who could have sustained the years of Pollock's struggle. Her faith in his work comes through with vivid intensity in Harden's role. Her final break under the years of stress is superbly done by Harden in the near-final scene.
In all, this film is a masterpiece of filmmaker's art. Harris managed the filming with manifest abilities. Directing himself in the painting scenes is hard to imagine. His control of every scene is masterful. He cannot garner enough accolades for his direction of an excellent team. This is a film to treasure. Whatever Harris takes on next will inevitably command attention. One can almost conjure a list of personalities he might deal with in future films. Will biography become his particularly specialty, or was his submersion into Pollock's personality too great to be duplicated with another figure?
Movie Review: "You NEED, you NEED, you NEED" to see this film
Summary: 5 Stars
There is a scene where Ed Harris as Jackson Pollock is staring at a giant empty canvas in his Soho loft with his girlfriend Harden, for days on end...he has been noticed by the overbearing, manipulative but incredibly compassionate genius art impresario Peggy Guggenheim, queen in a man's art world of princes wanting to be king...he simply stares at it: a six foot tall, ten to twelve foot long canvas of pure white nothingness in his house that's been almost completely remodeled to fit it, for what goes into weeks...Harden tells him that Peggy is thinking of changing her mind about giving him the opportunity of having this finished work hung in her studio--the forerunner of the first of her internationally known museums...he stares, broodingly, deeply, contempletively, fearfully, sadly, and with a look reminiscent of a chlid trying to figure out why his Daddy is leaving down the road in his car without saying goodbye; with eyes that tell the story of intuitive disillusionment darkening a natural, childlike optimistic naivete; he looks this way at a blank, almost spiritually abusive wall of canvas, as if he feels his muse, his art, his very talent has left him the way a father leaves a child, without explanation, and isn't coming back......and then it hits him. Inspiration.
And he paints.
The artist Chuck Close was once quoted as saying "art is the physical evidence of a performance"...
Ed Harris as Pollock picks up a huge brush and begins to dance across the canvas with huge, bright and dark, moody, curious and celebratory strokes and colors, and before the day is out--perhaps in the space of two hours--another Pollock masterpiece, deposing Picasso as the number one 20th century art Ubermensch is born--and it almsot giggles with self awareness, like a newborn genius child. And this is before he even develops the style that made him famous.
The whole scene is no more than eight minutes long.
This movie is poetry. This movie is dance. This movie is heartbreaking. This movie is raw. This movie is so very real, acted with such authenticity and impeccable craftsmanship. This movie is inspiring. This movie is remarkably entertaining. Ed Harris, in the role he was born for (regardless of how overworked that phrase is), BECOMES the tortured, artistic, 20th century avatar of van Gogh that is Jackson Pollock, completely.
This movie is art.
Movie Review: He he he he he . . . ha ha ha. Polar Life!
Summary: 5 Stars
Everyone has an opinion, so I will give mine. This movie is good not only because Harris gave an inspired performance, but also because he both nailed Pollock and exemplified the times that were American Abstract Expressionism. You must remember that Peggy Guggenheim and Pollock are the pair that made Modern American Art credible, which before them (patron and artist), modern art was European, and Americans were "unimportant."
Action Painting is the genre that Pollock worked in. The feeling for it is born inside the viewer (ideally) who must associate with the patterns, colors, and detail, or it's all garbage. You relate your real life to the reality of the forms in the painting. Think of Ultra Conservative vs. Radical (in an attempt to use a common model). Polarizing . . . huh? For instance, when you view works of John Singer Sargent, you may think of someone you know who is particularly aristocratic or authoritative, or Rembrandt, someone who is sage and avuncular. These works align beauty with convention. Your feelings are rarely mixed. Instead, Pollock's work is polarizing, for you see either something you viscerally understand (perhaps regrettably) or simply stupid, confusing lines, blobs, and a mess. You may both love and hate (fear) abstract art at once. This is what I mean by polarizing: your mixed emotions will be in extremes.
To me, Pollock is visceral. For years, action painting horrified me, when I could only understand Rembrandt, Rubens, or Boucher, etc. Then life happened to me, and I finally realized that life doesn't have to be a perfect and pretty picture to be loved. It's your visceral remembrance (erudition) that forms who you really are. Compare Pollock's work LUCIFER (1947). This painting is the definition of what I'm talking about. Then, it's true that from Impressionism on, patrons have to be a little "abstract" themselves, or you'll never get it, or even need to. There will always be Rembrandt.
Harris's story gives insight enough into how Pollock became rich and famous, and deeply tortured. Lastly, he confessed more than once, by the end, that he felt like a fraud, especially when he ran out of ideas . . . .
Movie Review: One of the Best of 2000!
Summary: 5 Stars
"Pollock" was one of the best movies of 2000. It is the directorial debut of Ed Harris (nominated for the Oscar for "Apollo 13" and "The Truman Show") and he put his heart and soul into this work. According to an interview, Harris spent about 10 years working on the idea for creating a film biopic of the famous Amercian painter, Jackson Pollock. The movie is full of art and it is told with a lot of heart. The cinematography is excellent; the story begins from Pollock's meeting with Lee Krasner, played by Marcia Gay Harden, and follows him through his successful and revolutionary career as a modern/abstract artist. I believe Ed Harris as a director beautifully captures Pollock's personal life, with small scenes of his short temper, his hunger for attention and respect, his support from his friends and his family and his possible mental disorder. The movie itself is like a piece of modern art- it strikes you immediately and keeps you watching. The recreation of Pollock's actual paintings is an absolute miracle, and it works magnificently for the film. As an actor, Harris gives probably the performance of his career, and he received a well-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Actor. There are moments when Harris literally paints on canvas and you could swear that he is painting exactly the way Pollock did. Marcia Gay Harden gives an equally wonderful performance as his wife, whose deep love for the talented but unstable Pollock caused her to sacrifice much, including the prospect of a child and Pollock's respect when he began an affair with a mistress at the end of his life. Harden won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
What started as a low-budget independent film has now become one of the best biopics of an artist. Jackson Pollock himself did not live very long- died when he was 44. But this film effectively captures the finest (and worst) moments of his short life and I believe everyone can appreciate this film. As a painter myself, I found those scenes in which Pollock is painting on canvas the most engaging. I see similarities in his style and my own sometimes. Truly, on the the best films of 200.
Movie Review: One Of The Best Films Of The Decade!
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the great injustices this year was that Ed Harris did not win the Oscar for best actor for his superb portrayal of the tormented and compulsively frenetic artistic genius Jackson Pollock in the movie "Pollock". When one views all of the supporting documentation in the wonderful DVD package accompanying the film, one recognizes the incredible ways in which Harris literally nails the character dead-on not only in terms of personality, but in terms of style and mannerisms, in his interpretation of this driven alcoholic modern painter compelled to push himself to the limit in pursuing what he thought to be true and authentic in painting. This is a film that is so well done it literally defies comparison with anything recent, and the fact that it was treated relatively shabbily at the Academy Awards (only Marcia Gay Hardin was recognized for her well-deserved Oscar for best supporting actress as Jackson Pollock's long suffering but ever faithful wife Lee Krasner, an accomplished artist in her own right who also was widely recognized for her painting abilities, although not until later in life, after Pollock's death. Also terrific here is Amy Madigan, Harris' real-life wife who turns in a great supporting role as Peggy Guggenheim, one of the very famous and very rich Guggenheims, and a person primarily responsible for bringing Pollock to the attention of the painting public by using her gallery as a showcase for Pollock's astonishing modern works.
This film is terrific in every detail, from the Brooklyn accents mastered by Marcia Gay Hardin in her portrayal to the costumes and wardrobe to the cars used to the fabulous 1940s big swing and jazz musical backgrounds employed. The sets are terrific, as is the ensemble acting by the assembled cast. The story spills off the screen and the viewer finds himself enraptured by the magic squirting from the manic brushstrokes Pollock swirls on the canvas with such energy and purpose. We are transported magically into Pollock's world in a movie so good one cannot imagine why it is such a secret. This is easily one of the best films of the new millennium! Enjoy!