Ed Harris' directorial debut

The film in which Ed Harris directed himself to a Best Actor nomination was Pollock, the biopic about abstract painter Jackson Pollock. Harris did not win the award for this film, but his co-star, Marcia Gay Harden, did take home the award for Best Supporting actress for her portrayal of Pollock's wife, Lee Krasner. The film was not nominated for any other Oscars.

The film tells the story of Pollock's life, from his time as a struggling artist beginning to hone his craft and discover his style to his death. Harris is stunningly great as Pollock. I have been a fan of his work for a long time, and I don't think I have ever seen him give such a strong performance as this one. Understandably so, too, as this film was a real passion project for Harris, a project that he had been working on for about ten years before finally getting it filmed. He takes a role that has been done many times before, and that could easily fall into cliche - the role of the tortured artistic genius, struggling to find recognition for work that is far ahead of its time and to battle the personal demons that go along with his genius - and he finds a way to make it fresh and exciting and full of energy. Harden matches Harris note for note with her performance. She is entirely convincing in a role that hits multiple notes, some of which seem to contradict each other. Krasner seems genuine throughout, whether she is acting as a jealous contemporary artist, a loving wife, a domineering shrew, a parasite living off of her spouse's fame, or a verbal sparring partner who gives as good as she gets.

Pollock is thoroughly worth watching on the strength of the performances alone. Unfortunately, the story that the performances serve is not quite so strong. It is interesting, to be sure, but it just doesn't have much of a sense of narrative flow. There is no feeling that this encounter in his early life led to that development in his style and technique later. Instead, the film felt like a random collection of scenes from Pollock's life - here are a few scenes from when he was an unknown artist, skip a few years, here are a few scenes from when others in the artistic community started to know who Pollock was, skip a few years, here are a few scenes from when he started to become famous, skip a few years, etc. I was never bored, watching this, but I didn't come out of it feeling like it had really told me a story either.

Another shortcoming in my opinion, and one that tends to be shared by many biopics about famous artists, is that it tells the viewer that Pollock is a genius without explaining why he was a genius. It may all make sense to viewers who know something about modern art, but the uninitiated will not find any clues to help them to understand what made his work so revolutionary and important. Abstract painting is a style whose defenders have always said that it is not just random splatters of paint thrown onto the canvas, that there is meaning to the colors and patterns of each painting. And yet, in this film, Pollock, the father of that artistic style, says several times that he doesn't know what his paintings are of, and he is often unsure of whether they are finished. Can he really create meaningful works of art without knowing what the meaning is?

Movie trivia question: Performers winning Oscars for non-English language roles are pretty rare - it has only happened six times in Oscar history so far. Who is the only performer to win an Oscar for a performance given in French?