SCRIPT LACKS ART IN HARRIS' 'POLLOCK'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Ed Harris' labor-of-love Jackson Pollock film biography has its virtues, but it is ultimately defeated by a life that was, unavoidably, lived in movie-like cliches. In its - pardon the pun - broad strokes, ``Pollock'' reveals the great abstract expressionist to have been the stereotypical genius/beast: selfish, self-destructive and often lacking rudimentary self-control.

Pollock's monstrousness has been as widely chronicled as his revolutionary drip action painting has been justly celebrated. But only in quick, unsatisfying snatches does Harris, who both directed the movie and plays its subject, capture other aspects of what was certainly a very complicated personality. Watching the movie, we end up waiting for Jackson to fall off the wagon, achieve his next creative breakthrough, abuse another admirer, enjoy guest appearances by other postwar art celebrities - then do it all over again and again.

Harris has reportedly been working out his film, which marks the well-regarded actor's directorial debut, for more than a decade. And whatever the picture's faults may be, a palpable lack of commitment is not one of them. Harris not only throws himself body and soul into the painter's mammoth binges, abysmal depressions and superheroic benders, but when Pollock sets to splattering paint over canvas on the ground, Harris turns his entire body into an astounding instrument of primal, manic expression. Informed by years of painting practice, it's a great performance in search of better-written material (the screenwriters were Barbara Turner and Susan J. Emshwiller, the latter of whom is the daughter of noted avant-gardist Ed Emshwiller).

And in a kind of hushed, shell-shocked way that may well evoke Pollock's gobsmacked view of the world, Harris gets a nice feel for the New York bohemian scenes of the 1940s and '50s up on the screen. From the shabby crucibles of Greenwich Village studios to dealer Peggy Guggenheim's pretentious galleries and home (she's played, with haughty brio, by Harris' wife, Amy Madigan), not a detail is missed nor awkwardly placed.

When matters move out to rural Long Island, where Pollock and his artist wife Lee Krasner decamped for him to (somewhat) dry out and reach his creative peak during the last years of his life, we definitely miss the subtle vibrance of the city scenes. But again, Harris can't really mess with the recorded facts, even if the movie loses some zing and richness because of it.

Although friends visit the farmhouse, we're pretty much stuck in the company of Pollock and Krasner through the film's middle. And while he's an ogre, at least he's engaging; she's just a pill. Again, there isn't anything particularly wrong with Marcia Gay Harden's portrayal - indeed, the scene in which Lee rebuffs Jackson's expressed desire for a child in no uncertain terms is as good as anything that's been filmed this year, and she's the one who carries it - but the script lets her down.

Here is a woman who suppressed her own prodigious talent for years to essentially baby-sit a spoiled genius, and the character here is usually reduced to spouting the weakest enabler's aphorisms and occasionally blowing up over her husband's irrepressible infidelities. One would think that, even in the oppressively domesticated '50s, a woman of such independent mind and ability would have expressed herself more imaginatively.

And that, ultimately, is what you wish could have happened with ``Pollock'' overall. There's an undeniable honor in focusing on the facts and the artist's work as Harris has done here, and to have even attempted to shoot the film in some hyped-up, swirling camera manner that tried to look like the paintings would have been beyond foolish. Rather, it was the thinking about this thoughtful film that needed to go further, deeper, somewhere new.

After all, much as drip paintings became art cliches soon after Pollock perfected them, films about great talents who are ghastly people need extra textures of humanism and insight to establish their uniqueness.

``POLLOCK''

(Rated R: language, sex)

The stars: Ed Harris, Marcia Gay Harden, Amy Madigan, Jennifer Connelly, Jeffrey Tambor.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Ed Harris. Written by Barbara Turner and Susan J. Emshwiller, based on Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith's book ``Jackson Pollock: An American Saga.'' Produced by Fred Berner, Jon Kilik and Harris. Released by Sony Pictures Classics.

Running time: One hour, 57 minutes.

Playing: Sunset 5, West Hollywood.

Our rating: Two and one half stars

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

Ed Harris directed and stars in ``Pollock,'' the story of the legendary abstract painter Jackson Pollock.