One would blame the director for not asking his star to make the scene less of a moment , but Harris took on that role himself. After all, he s been living with this project for ten long years. He practically is Pollock. Before Night Falls , Harris is clearly more interested in Pollock the Man over Pollock the Artist. It s odd to think that Schnabel s film is the more painterly of the two, considering it s the story of a sensitive writer .
Harirs camera is unobtrusive, meant to highlight the acting.
This is the chief mistake he makes. The studio scenes, where Pollock discovers his frenetic approach to painting, are less about visual metaphors for implosive discovery than about Ed Harris , hunched over, brow furrowed, cigarette jutting from his taut lips. The weight of Harris performance is meant to carry us through, but he s doing nothing Marlon Brando hadn t uncorked years ago with his brutish, physical interpretation of Stanley Kowalski. This is never more apparent than his scenes opposite Marcia Gay Harden, mangling a Brooklynese accent as Pollock s long suffering wife, Lee Krasner. Pollock is the Tortured Aritst, an archetype familiar from such films as Basquiat, Lust For Life , Total Eclipse and Surviving Picasso , among others.