Movie review

Okay, first off, check out the awesome new counter at the bottom of my page... shweet!

Second off, could you tell I'm procrastinating doing some real work today? this is my third post in the last twelve hours!! And I still can't walk through my room, nor have I gotten any of my bulletin boards finished, nor have I even glanced at my lesson plan! Oh well, a girl does what she can... It's not really my job anyway; I just do it to save Melissa's turkey.

This week (as if I really do these things weekly; pshya!) I chose to review the movie Pollock. As the title suggests, it is about the great American painter Jackson Pollock. This movie came recommended to me (well, he referred to it as "that movie" rather than "that stupid movie" as he usually does, which means he kinda liked it) by my philosophy of art teacher.


If you aren't interested in the life of Jackson Pollock, if you don't care for his work, or have no idea who the man is, than this movie isn't for you. If you have no concern about art history or theory, this movie definitely isn't for you. It isn't a climactic story of how a man comes into genius- on the contrary, it's about how a man loses it. It's a dry movie, with no dramatic pinacles, and without a climactic ending. Then again, so was Pollock's life.

As Pollock is one of my favorite artists (along with Picasso, Rothko, Kandinsky, and Van Gogh.. to name a few..) I was very interested in this movie. I knew very little about his life, other than he liked to drink too much, was in love with too many women, and kept his studio a living mess. I knew he was killed in a drunk driving accident, and that is all I knew. Honestly, that is more than I needed to know. Pollock's paintings are beautiful because it doesn't matter who painted them, when they were painted- none of that matters because the painting points to nothing outside of itself. It is just paint on a canvas. And so I wonder why I am attracted to watch a movie about a man just because this paint on a canvas intrigues me. Afterall, why should the events in a man's life effect the way I look at paint drippings? I'll tell you why. The life and situations and experiences created the artist (some would go furthur to say that society created the life and situations and experiences that created the artist) and the artist created the drippings. I can't see what Jackson Pollock was thinking when he splashed paint onto a canvas, no one can see that but him which is why it is pointless to try and figure out what he was "saying" But I can look at the splashes of paint and see the process that was used to form them, which was the "point" of Pollock's painting anyway, and who the artist was is a part of that process.

So, if you're an art lover, it's a great movie. If you don't care for art history, or trivial facts about the biographies of artists, then don't waste your time. It's not that great of a movie.


I tried to put some examples of Pollock's work up, but for some reason the images aren't uploading properly. Maybe later...