Harris’ Labor Of Love Is Infectious

Who would’ve guessed that the Best Supporting Actress of 2000 would be one of the few female performers in Space Cowboys? Of course, Marcia Gay Harden didn’t win her prized Oscar for that popcorn flick, but for the more serious-minded Pollock, Ed Harris’ earnest directorial debut about the mercurial American abstract artist. Harden stars as Jackson Pollock’s long-suffering wife, THE artist Lee Krasner, and audiences have their chance to validate the Academy’s choice by catching this intriguingly fluid film, now playing at Bethel Cinema.

Harris stars as the abstract painter Pollock, and the film begins with his days as a struggling, yet on-the-cusp-of-high-regard artist in New York City in 1941. His career begins to take off after he meets fellow artist Krasner, a painter who shares his love of art, and uses her exhilaration over his burgeoning talent and creations to excite others about Pollock’s work and encourage him to further his gift.  But even as Krasner is hard at work trying to instill confidence, spur his imagination and prop him up, Pollock is also battling destructive demons, including alcohol and self-doubt, that threaten to tear him down. The volatility of their relationship parallels the volatility of Pollock’s relationship to his art, a rapport that can be at once affirming and at other times disparaging.

It has been well documented how Harris, himself Oscar nominated for his lead performance here, poured himself into this film, a labor of love for which he even spent money out of his own pocket in order to complete. His passion, evident in nearly every frame, is also infectious, infusing not only Harden’s sturdy performance, but also the audience’s experience of watching the movie. Harris and his screenwriters, Barbara Turner and Susan Emshwiller, eschew the route of trying to psychoanalyze their subject. (Sure, the movie gives us his struggle with alcoholism, self-absorption, self-doubt and the like, but it never really broaches the question of “Why?”) Instead, they basically try to let the viewer simply experience the art and the artist and draw their own conclusions about the tragic aspects of this tortured soul.

Arguably, Pollock, rated R for language and sexuality, is never quite compelling as a “biopic,” per se, but without question it comes brilliantly alive as a stunningly exciting depiction of the creation of art.  Harris is fantastically successful in the sequences of Pollock at work, and the lively score by Jeff Beal jumps bouncily to life whenever Pollock’s paint goes flying across the canvas. Harris stages these scenes with a joy and kineticism that have more life and pacing than most action sequences in a big-budget Hollywood film. Of course, the fact that we actually see Harris paint, simple as that may sound, has a lot to do with it. As the saying goes, “easier said than done,” but the dedicated Harris and his keen co-stars apply themselves so wholeheartedly to the task that they might make some viewers as ready to pick up paint and brush as avid moviegoers were to don boxing gloves and skip rope after seeing Rocky.