Pollock Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Pollock Blu-ray Movie Review

"What beast must I adore?"

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown December 15, 2023

Pollock is a strange, chaotic independent feature, one that's as difficult to wrap your head around as the enigmatic painter whose life and art are front and center. Director Ed Harris not only starred as abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock (a performance for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), he fought for years to find the funding and support to bring the film to the screen. A decade-long passion project in the making, Harris's biopic began its life in the actor's imagination after he received a copy of the 1989 biography, "Jackson Pollock: An American Saga" by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, from his father. But for whatever reason, Hollywood was skeptical. Perhaps the tragic descent of a famous artist wasn't seen as a film with box office potential at a time when independent features were still gaining notoriety. Or perhaps the story of a man struggling with a fractured marriage and failing to control his rampant alcoholism wasn't sexy enough for the coming turn of the century. Harris, though, wouldn't relent, and at long last, in 1999 production began. The shoot was a mere 50 days, Harris honed his mimicry and painted his own Pollock-esque works, and something of a divisive masterpiece was born. Pollock is as erratic a biopic as its subject, and just as frustrating. It's a fine film, with powerful performances, but it never quite grasps hold of who Jackson Pollock was beyond his self-destructive tendencies and striking art.

"I think you don't realize how hard I worked to get people interested in your work..."

Directed by Best Actor Academy Award nominee Ed Harris ('The Truman Show', 'The Rock'), Pollock tells the story of legendary American painter, Jackson Pollock. Fellow artists and lovers, Pollock and Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance) find themselves at the center of the 1940s New York art scene. But as Krasner neglects her work to push Pollock's career forward, he begins to unravel emotionally. The strained couple escape to the country and marry and, soon, Pollock begins to create stunning, uniquely abstract artwork that makes him the first internationally famous modern painter in America. Alas, with fame and fortune comes a volatile temper and severe self-doubt. Before long, Pollock's life threatens to explode and cause collateral damage to everyone near him. The film also stars Amy Madigan, Val Kilmer, Jennifer Connelly, Bud Cort, John Heard, Jeffrey Tambor, Matt Sussman, Stephanie Seymour and Tom Bower.

Harris becomes Pollock. By way of battling for a decade and practically willing the film into existence, by way of pure passion or deceptively simple skill; it doesn't matter. Harris elevates everyone he shares the screen with, starting with Marcia Gay Harden and extending to his entire supporting cast. A narrative wobble increasingly leads the story into further and further reaches of Pollock's mental spin, which all at once mirrors its lead character and places us in the shoes of a man slowly losing his grip on his own sanity, but also leaves us dizzy and baffled by the man whirling in circles at our side. Alcoholism is a deep, dreadful vice that Harris captures with startling accuracy, maybe even familiarity, but it also leaves us without an anchor point. We aren't watching Pollock's decline from the outside, by way of Krasner or others. Instead we're invited to join Harris in Pollock's mind, and it's an unstable, healthy place to spend two hours. It's clear Pollock is a passion project, forged in fire, and yet it doesn't feel like Harris ever drilled deep enough to discover what drove Pollock, what moved him, what kept him sane and what, other than substance abuse, wandering eyes and hands, and poor relationship management, pushed him down a very steep slope to a bitter, tragic end. The man we're given throughout the film is as angry and abstract a work of art as his paintings.

But then there's Pollock's own words on himself, some of which are alluded to in the film, some of which are oddly left behind. "Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is." "If people would just look at the paintings, I don't think they would have any trouble enjoying them. It's like looking at a bed of flowers, you don't tear your hair out over what it means." "Art is coming face to face with yourself." "When I am in a painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, et cetera, because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well." Or most tellingly, "The modern artist is living in a mechanical age and we have a mechanical means of representing objects in nature such as the camera and photograph. The modern artist, it seems to me, is working and expressing an inner world - in other words - expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces." Maybe Harris is onto more than it seems. Maybe Pollock is the exact puzzle box Jackson Pollock would have approved. Maybe further viewings will reveal what this one did not. And maybe there is a man at the heart of Harris's own cinematic art who he knows, privately and personally, and is daring us to engage with in a relationship as he has.

Pollock Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sony's Blu-ray release of Pollock looks fantastic thanks to an often elegant, at-times gritty and grainy 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer that's extremely faithful to Harris and directory of photography Lisa Rinzler's intentions. Colors are warm and lifelike, with convincing flesh tones, rich black levels, punchy primaries and consistent and consistently striking contrast. Detail is excellent too, revealing every tiny trail, spatter and speck of paint on Pollock's massive canvases. Edge definition is crisp and largely free of artificiality (although a few minor instances sneak through in bright, naturally lit, cloud-covered exteriors) and fine textures are revealing, particularly in close-ups. Peruse the screenshots attached to this review; if there's a mark or nick on Ed Harris's aging, stubbly then bearded face, you'll find plenty of razor sharp evidence of it here. It's more than possible a bit of noticeable artificial sharpening was applied to help bolster such clarity, but sharper shots rarely look manufactured or boosted. Grain is also intact and quite uniform. There is one eyesore of a scene, shot in terribly low light and erupting with heavy, swarming grain (see screenshot 19), but as Harris continually states (almost apologetically) on his commentary track, it's an independent feature; implying such scenes come with the territory.

Pollock Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Jeff Beal's score fills the soundfield, charting Pollock's descent into madness and addiction perfectly, both in cinematic tone and in sonic fidelity. Sony's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track follows suit, lending a front-heavy, conversational soundscape an immersive quality it may not have otherwise. Voices are clear, precise and intelligible (barring a scant few lines of dialogue, typically in gallery show scenes, that didn't make it to the mic cleanly and weren't repaired with ADR) and dynamics are solid. The rear speakers aren't as engaging as you might expect, except when Pollock tantrums and leaves a room in ruins. Nor is LFE output very reliable, other than when Beal's music calls for its support. It isn't a bad track by any means. I would even say it's average. It does all it needs to do with the sound design its given. I was pleased.

Pollock Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary - Director/actor Ed Harris delivers a solo commentary track, speaking in hushed reverence and choppy sentences as if he's sitting next to you in a darkened movie theater, worried he'll interrupt or negate the impact of the film. It's kind of adorable at first, but grows a tad annoying after a while. Still, Harris has a lot to offer, behind-the-scenes notes and pre-production details especially, and he's forthcoming to the point of criticizing what he perceives to be technical mistakes. It's worth a listen but don't be surprised if you grow bored and check out midway.

• Charlie Rose Interview (SD, 25 minutes) - Harris' quiet but fiery passion is obvious in this solid Charlie Rose TV interview, touching on key topics at greater length than he does in his hit-or-miss audio commentary.

• The Making of Pollock (SD, 20 minutes) - A redundant but solid DVD-era production featurette.

• Deleted Scenes (SD, 6 minutes) - Four rough, unfinished scenes are included: "The Cedar Bar", "Lee's Painting", "Infinity at My Fingertips" and "Stray Dogs". All were wisely cut for pacing but are still worth a watch.

• Theatrical Trailer

Pollock Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Pollock looks great, sounds good, and has a nice little selection of extras. What more could you want? Only a film that takes a bit more time, asks a few more personal questions, and introduces us, fully and unabashedly, to an exposed but relatable -- or at the least understandable -- man whose art is his only true release and expression. I wanted so desperately to know Pollock more. To know him better. Instead, I feel I've only scratched the surface, which I suspect is precisely how Harris felt.