This well-paced film provides an insight into the shared life of the influential modern American painters Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. It’s based on Steven Naifeh's biography of Pollock, ‘An American Saga’ and covers the period from his early works through his sober and productive days and then to his alcoholic decline.

The love-story starts in 1941 in New York’s Greenwich Village as the young, Bohemian, hard-drinking, jazz-loving Pollock (Ed Harris) meets fellow artist, Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden) who he declares initially to be ‘an excellent woman painter’. They immediately commence a physical relationship which casts the woman into the role of the often frustrated manager and carer of a wild, alcoholic boy-man.

Pollock pursues a creative purity in his painting that he seeks to derive from his unconscious mind. Away from the city, off the grog and in-touch with nature, Pollock and his art blossom with Krasner’s nurturing. He ‘cracks it wide open,’ as Krasner describes it, when he starts dripping paint onto the canvas he has laid on the floor in his famous ‘Blue Poles’ style. In 1949 Life Magazine presents a feature article on him which confirms his stature.

When ‘on the bottle,’ Pollock’s manner alternates between taciturn and explosive. His wild and dangerous behaviour makes him look like a trapped animal and we learn that this combination of ‘madness and genius’ perhaps saved him from military service in the Second World War.

Director Ed Harris is great as Pollock, as is Marcia Gay Harden as Krasner, his second wife. Harris was nominated for an Oscar for this role while Harden won one for her wonderful character. There’s good support too from Val Kilmer as Willem DeKooning and Amy Madigan as Peggy Guggenheim.

Like the painter, ‘Pollock’ the film has bold, creative flourishes. Director of photography Lisa Rinzler achieves a luscious depiction of the landscape, interiors and the art of the time. The latter was recreated by Lisa Lawley who was also Ed Harris’ painting coach for the film. Setting off from Harris’ polished script, the story is beautifully and sensitively told. It’s poetic and lyrically rhythmic with the editing credit to a woman, too, suggesting that feminine energy and sensibilities have contributed to the outstanding success of the project.

On the one hand it’s a romantic and heartwarming story of love and creativity but on the other the film is haunted by ominous signs that the joy can always be threatened with tragedy from a bout of Pollock’s drinking. It’s a great film that tells the sorry tale of a fascinating painter and the substance abuse which thwarted him. Obviously it will especially interest art-lovers but ‘Pollock’ is so well made that it will entertain everyone.

Andrew Bunney

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