Pick of the Week: Pollock

Length: 122 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for language and brief sexuality

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Jackson Pollock: An American Saga by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, Pollock is a biopic about one of the most important painters of the 20th century. Ed Harris received an Academy Award nomination for his performance in the title role, and Marcia Gay Harden won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Pollock’s wife, Lee Krasner. The film covers the period from around the time that Pollock and Krasner met in 1941 until Pollock’s death in 1956.

The story gets underway in Greenwich Village in 1941 when Pollock was an obscure, impoverished 29-year-old artist. He is shown skunk drunk with his brother, first talking about how Gene Krupa is the greatest drummer in the world, then suddenly loudly cursing Picasso. Beginning in adolescence, Pollock battled alcoholism for the rest of his life. But as portrayed in the film, his underlying problem seems to have been of a psychiatric nature, and the character is depicted in a way that suggests bipolar disorder.

The following day, Pollock is in his sixth-floor walk-up apartment when he hears knocking. He opens the door to find another obscure, struggling painter, Lee Krasner, who was then about 33 years old. Pollock and Krasner are each going to exhibit a painting in the same group show, and she has dropped by to meet him and look at his work. Pollock’s talent as an artist and his brute masculinity seem to appeal to Krasner, and a few months later she moves in with him, even though she has already seen the devastating effects of his alcoholic binges.

Krasner quickly becomes a combination of Pollock’s lover, caregiver, and career manager. One day while she watches Pollock experiment with a new approach to abstract painting, Krasner reiterates the current conventional wisdom, "You can only abstract from life, from nature." But Pollock, who believes art should come from within the artist, counters, "I am nature."

In 1943 Pollock gets a big break when he meets Peggy Guggenheim (Amy Madigan), although he nearly misses his opportunity by showing up late and drunk when she comes to look at his work. Impressed with his talent, Guggenheim gives Pollock a one-man show in her prestigious gallery and commissions him to paint a mural for her new townhouse. After weeks of staring at the blank canvas for the mural, Pollock suddenly goes to work with a great burst of energy and creates a stunning large painting virtually overnight. Guggenheim is thrilled with the mural, but at her party to show it off, Pollock gets drunk and urinates in her fireplace.

Although no sales result immediately from Pollock’s 1943 show at Guggenheim’s gallery, he receives a favorable review from critic Clement Greenberg (Jeffrey Tambor). Greenberg loves abstraction and goes around spouting aphorisms like, "Paint is paint. Surface is surface. That’s all they should be." Greenberg’s championing of Pollock’s work over the next few years eventually leads to sales and public acclaim. At one point Greenberg tells Pollock, "America has become the center of western civilization. And what you’re doing is the most original and vigorous art in the country."

In 1945 Krasner tells Pollock, "I want to get married, Pollock. I suddenly want. So, either we marry or we split." A little later as Pollock and Krasner walk along the beach, he tells her, "Church wedding or nothing," to which she replies, "What church?"

Next page More about Pollock Page1, 2