This
is not my standard kind of movie, but I definitely wanted
to see it. Pollock is a biography about the modern artist Jackson
Pollock. The movie starts out with him struggling to get noticed in
the 1940s. He is befriended by Marcia Gay Harden, who helps him get
recognition at various galleries in New York. They marry and move
out of the city, in order to help keep him away from his friends and
alcohol. But Pollock remains the classic tortured artist. Eventually,
he hits upon a new way of painting, by dripping or throwing paint
at the canvas while he crouches above it. This becomes all the rave
and his signature work.
His demons come
back to haunt him, even though he is now famous, appearing in Life
magazine, etc. The tension builds to the emotional disintegration
of his marriage and his sad end. While I'm not a fan of modern art
and don't like most of Pollock's paintings, I did enjoy the movie
about his life. I guess it's possible to like the artist but not the
art.
— marty
