Jackson Live

FANFAIR

ED HARRIS MAKES A SPLASH IN POLLOCK

every now and then, a movie born in Hollywood cries out, "Our blood I may be phony, but our suffering is real." No subgenre communicates this lament more efficiently than the torturedartist biopic, but until Ed Harris's Pollock—an especially exacting portrayal of crippled genius—no entry had struck on the P.B.&J. elegance of combining the roles of star and auteur in one and the same person.

That Harris gets away with such earnestness is a testament to his earnestness. It's hard to avert your eyes when a fine performer bets a decade on a project that requires him to blow out his waistline, paint like an original, and hold audiences breathless while he undertakes such pre-epiphany chores as clearing out an old farmhouse—and then its barn!

The period details from mid-20th-century America are magnetic, too. Because, though the arc of this tragedy serves merely to deposit blame with all those forces that bent Jackson Pollock inward— the media, his ego, a godless age, and particularly his savior/wife, Lee Krasner—the incontrovertible import of the opening scene's appliqued cardigan is that this species of cult hero belongs to the past. Slyly then, Ed's baby raises a very good question: Where now does this culture express its need for the giants it once routinely unleashed upon the earth? (Rating: * *)

CHRIS MITCHELL