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Perhaps the biggest shock of the Oscars in 2001 was Marcia Gay Harden winning the best supporting actress award for "Pollock". Some pundits felt Ed Harris might also have pipped Russell Crowe to the best actor prize, but the fact he went home empty-handed is no reflection on this biopic of the American painter, whose life was as chaotic and random as his revolutionary artwork.
It took Harris ten years to bring Jackson Pollock's story to the screen, and the result is a highly personal, rigorous, and thoughtful analysis of a truly troubled genius.
Beginning with a shot of Pollock at the height of his success, giving an autograph to the woman with whom he would eventually die in a car crash, the movie backtracks nine years to find him struggling to make his mark in 40s New York.
Prone to self-doubt, impotent rage, and drunkenness, Pollock is rescued from his demons by Lee Krasner (Harden), a fellow painter who becomes his wife, confidante, and most tireless champion. With her help, Jackson wins the patronage of wealthy Peggy Guggenheim (Harris's partner Amy Madigan), but his fame drives a wedge between himself and Lee.
The most electrifying sequences show Pollock at work on his famous drip paintings, conjuring dense anarchic patterns with a combination of skill, luck, and gravity. But Harris is equally at home showing the artist's self-destructive streak and its effect on Krasner, who Harden shows to have a will of iron beneath her unshakeable love and compassion.
