Pollock (2000)

Pollock (2000)

Cast: Ed Harris, Marcia Gay Harden

Director: Ed Harris

Synopsis:  Pollock (2000) is a biographical film which mirrors the “inside-out” life of the American abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock. It is based on the book “Jackson Pollock: An American Saga” by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. Directed, produced and stared by Ed Harris, the movie makes an intensive reading of Jackson Pollock’s artistically revolutionized life. The story begins with the close up shot of Jackson Pollock autographing the illustration of his artistic life in a life magazine for a woman in an exhibition of his paintings in 1950. The rest of Pollock’s life flashes back to 1941. The struggling artist Pollock finds it difficult to survive in the modern age of America where he makes no market value for his paintings. He lives with his brother Charles Pollock in a tiny apartment in New York City. As the time passes by artist Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden) visits him and they start living together. Character of Pollock goes through the concentrated psychic platforms which ultimately results the abstract expressionism in his paintings. Peggy Guggenheim, an art collector, gives him a contract. Pollock decides to marry Lee and they move to a country house by the ocean in Springs, NY, on Long Island. Jackson is disheartened when Lee makes clear to Jackson that she does not want to have a baby, partly because she is happy to just live as two painters, partly because of his neurosis, and partly because of the pecuniary situation and his painting needs.  Life magazine’s coverage on his life makes his life public and adds market value for his innovations in the painting. The movie goes through and reaches finally towards the eccentric and aesthetically heightened psychic constructions of Pollock. The entrance of Ruth Kligman (Jennifer Connelly) makes the life of Pollock and Lee confuses the role of Lee in the life of Pollock since she has rejected the proposal of a baby for Pollock. Pollock owes something to Lee and finally he pays her off with his life.

Review:         "To whom shall I hire myself out?

 What beast must I adore?

What holy image is attacked?

 What hearts must I break?

 What lie must I maintain? In what blood tread?"

 Part of Rimbaud's Season in Hell.

The classicality of this film rests in the poetic and aesthetic quality of ‘artistic abnormality’ which takes us to the ‘Other’ of Pollock. The “inside out” depiction of the life of Pollock celebrates the revolutionized artistic perception of life and nature. The sudden changes of scenes from light to dark happen until the ultimate celebration of Pollock’s life. The beginning of the movie is with a close up shot of a copy of life magazine and it plays a significant role in the life of the painter. The silence of the character Pollock stared by Ed Harris stimulates the unspoken utterances of his unknown psyche that visits him intermittently. The movie requires the viewer’s psychic involvement with the character of Pollock; otherwise the movie might lead us to a passive existence of a melodrama.

The selection of artists for the real life characters perfected with their psychic involvement in the movie. Ed Harris perfected the legendary saga of Jackson Pollock through sharp analysis and reflection of the mental instability. Like his mind, his painting is also raging for something; it could be freedom from tradition, social system or cultured pretentions of city life. Like the verses of Rimbaud’s Season in hell as mentioned above, there is a constant search for ‘what’ in his life and paintings. The long angle shots of Pollock looking at the large canvas which passes through the wall of two room reflects the shadow of his physical existence as well as the existence of his ‘Other’ on the  empty canvas, which makes the audience to ponder seriously on the ‘projection’ of  his life. The tight close ups of his eyes and the interconnection of an empty canvas conveys the idea of how the artist conceives a life in his mind and labors on the canvas. He has been pondering on something for weeks in his room alone and when the life of an image comes to his mind, the camera takes a tight close up and shows the widened eyes, which is overwhelmed by the new life found on the unknown shores of his mind. His life is an empty canvas stretched out on the floor around which he can walk along and paint the rough surface with the ineffable life. As he says, “My concern is with the rhythms of nature... I work inside out, like nature” the audience is not supposed to read his life and paintings on account of any preconceived judgment on life and art, expression and nature. When he says to Lee that he is life, the meaning of his painting is also explained. His paintings convey the mysterious ‘Other’ of his life and if we want to understand it we need to invoke the ‘Other’ of our existence too.

The role of Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden) deserves the hail for her life in the life of Pollock. If she weren’t there, Pollock and his paintings might have held captives of the four walls of the room. She merges in to the life of Pollock and we may not be able to find her existence separately. She is defined with the paintings of Pollock. She could be the ‘Other’ of his life or she could be the one who might have hired his life. As Pollock says, “I owe the woman something” he pays her off with the life of his existence, but the existence of his ‘other’ is still there living in his paintings and in the life of Lee. The presence of Lee makes Pollock dynamic and expressive. It’s Lee who always takes him in whenever he loses his conscience, but when she parts him we find fear and loneliness on his face which make him eccentric again.

The music plays an important and defining role in expressing the psychic variations of Pollock’s life. It helps the audience to accommodate the psychic ‘Other’ of the character. The music penetrates the mind of our psyche as well as it prepares a platform to welcome the character of Pollock. The shifts of scenes are sudden form light to dark and dark to light like we pass through the shutters of our mind. It opens and closes unexpectedly like the mind of Pollock. The technicality of the camera’s ‘eye’ adds beauty and tension to the mind of audience towards the last scenes. Towards the last scene camera uses vertigo effect in order to create a "falling-away-from-oneself feeling" or a feeling of unreality, or to suggest that a character is undergoing a realization that causes him to reassess everything he had previously believed.  Thus, altogether with the total involvement of characters, scenes, music, camera and lights the movie creates a new painting of life inside the walls of our mind.

The creativity of the artist Pollock, is the productivity of his mind’s (‘Other’s) thoughts and expressions of his psychic being which he calls his life and nature as he is the life and nature. The director works this out through the perfect blending and composition of frames and shot selections which are perfectly assisted by the music, darkness and light, camera techniques and above all the mind of the audience. The movie is a celebration of the freedom of our various psychic existences, if we want to feel the movie we have to transform ourselves in to the eccentric existence of our ‘Other’ which we hide from the public. We need the personal involvement in the movie and it becomes perfect only with the presence of our psychic and eccentric ‘selves’ with the character of Pollock. Thus, in totality the movie becomes a psychological celebration of our eccentric self and the liberation of our nature, life from the bondage of our cultured social pretensions and melodramatic life styles.