Pollock (2000)

Directed by Ed Harris. Starring Ed Harris, Marcia Gay Harden, Jeffrey Tambor, Amy Madigan, Bud Cort, Robert Knott, Jennifer Connelly, John Heard, Tom Bower. [R]

Muddled study of abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock was clearly a passion project for actor Ed Harris, who not only plays the tortured artist, but also co-produced and directed for the first time in his film career. Yet the passion seems to have gotten in the way of clarity and strategy; we’re given a lengthy, loving peek into the artistic process as Pollock discovers, develops (and obsesses over) his bold “drip” style (“an impregnable language of image, beautiful and subtle patterns of pure form”), but at what personal cost? When he’s not creating, he’s destroying; a volatile, pathetic drunk who seems to hate himself even more than he hates everyone else, and no one here is able to mount a persuasive argument—for or against—the theory of suffering being a worthwhile price for great art. The potency of Harris’ performance eventually gets drained by repetition; Oscar-winner Harden is very much his equal as his wife, Lee Krasner, but she, too, is unable to find the rhyme and reason behind her loyalty to this man. There are missing pieces, as if Harris ran out of proverbial paint halfway through and had to settle on an incomplete portrait (for example, Connelly shows up in the last twenty minutes as Jackson’s young lover without much in the way of introduction or explanation), and so we’re left with a number of fascinating or arresting moments adrift in a sea of ebbing and flowing misery. Val Kilmer makes a couple of brief appearances as fellow abstract artist Willem de Koonig.

55/100