POLLOCK

2001

This may be the first movie about a painter to rise above the usual Hollywood cliche, "cut-off-your-ear-in-a -wheatfield" or "paint-a-chapel-while-on-your-back" form of biography. But, if that's the case then maybe some cliches are better. This film by producer, director, and actor Ed Harris, although obviously a labor of love for him, is much too slow-paced, and often surprisingly dull. Actor Ed Harris does a brilliant job in portraying the crazed madman who happened to be one of the world's greatest abstract expressionists, and Marcia Gay Hayden is even better as his long-suffering wife, Lee Krassner. (Both performances have received Academy Award nominations this year.) However, the film only comes alive when Pollock is splattering and drizzling paint onto his huge canvases to create the "works of art" that made him so famous. "Works of art" which I've always thought could have been created by a class of pre-schoolers just before being put down for nap-time!

3 Stars

NJB