From the jump, Pollock is a wreck, damaged, alcoholic and unsure of himself. Much of Pollock's rage is channeled through his painting, of course, which grants him a self-understanding he finds nowhere else. In the scenes where Pollock paints, especially the later ones where he adopts his famous drip technique, cinematographer Lisa Rinzler moves the camera as if in time with his thoughts, with Jeff Beal's score pulsing with the thrill of invention and vision. Pollock's stardom was huge and frightening, too much to live up to and too seductive to turn down. He had help in surviving it as long as he did.
Paint is paint.
And paint is where Pollock both finds and loses himself. His efforts to stay sober are doomed by his own gargantuan insecurities and competitiveness, as well as Lee's ambition and inadvertent enabling. Pollock 's most provocative insights concern the complex intertwinings of celebrity and prodigious talent, the insidious ways that art is packaged and ego sold. At its best, Pollock stops looking for words and definitions, and instead, displays the accidents that, for Jackson Pollock, never stopped coming. All rights reserved.