JANUARY 26, 2002
6:30 PM

“POLLOCK” 

Directed By:  Ed Harris

Perhaps the consummate film for a psychoanalytic discussion of art and movies, "Pollock" portrays the pathological relationships and battered psyches that gave birth to the American abstract expressionist movement. "Pollock" dramatizes the events at the epicenter of the rapid postwar emergence of the United States as preeminent in oil painting.

Ebert selected "Pollock" as one of the best 10 movies of 2000. "Ed Harris has taken the biopic to a new level. Although the skeleton of the film is no more than the troubled life of an alcoholic struggling with fame, the power of the acting and sequence of the film take it a step further."

The New York Times said, " …the first movie about a painter to transcend the gushy clichés that try to unravel the mysteries of artistic creation. ..Jackson Pollock, whom Mr. Harris portrays with a riveting blend of pent-up passion and unleashed physicality, threw his entire body into his work. The scenes of Pollock standing over a giant canvas creating his famous drip paintings in graceful swooping gestures offer a visceral thrill similar to watching a brilliantly choreographed action-adventure sequence."

"Because it's art that's being made, there's an added emotional kick. What we're witnessing isn't a succession of exploding cars, but an utterly convincing release of pure feeling deployed with the discipline of a natural athlete executing an unparalleled feat after years of preparation."

"..No actor is better suited than Mr. Harris to portray the artist, who knew Tennessee Williams and was said to have been an inspiration for Stanley Kowalski, the instinctive brute who galvanizes "A Streetcar Named Desire." And in "Pollock," the tense domestic clashes between the artist and his wife, the painter Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden), are subtly staged to recall the electrifying chemistry of Marlon Brando and Kim Hunter in the film of "Streetcar." More than any contemporary actor, Mr. Harris has always resembled the young Brando in his projection of an archetypal manliness devoid of vanity, the kind of guy whose swagger doesn't have a trace of affectation."

"Besides its Action Painting sequences, the film's biggest triumph is its richly shaded portrayal of the complicated Pollock-Krasner relationship. "Pollock" reminds us that great art isn't about creating beauty out of misty-eyed Hallmark moments but about discovering and communicating messy truths that spill all over the place, just like the lives of the artists driven to uncover them."

(Film website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/pollock/ )