Pollock

1941: an artist on the verge of a nervous breakthrough. When Lee Krasner sidles through Jackson Pollock's door, he's nursing an apparently permanent hangover. She's interested in his work, and in him - reflecting his own priorities perfectly. Krasner takes him in hand, introducing him to the people who will break him: the critics , the dealers, the patrons. Pollock will piss in Peggy Guggenheim's fireplace - and she will love him for it. He will become the first modern American art star, embodying all the contradictions buried in those words. This impressive and absorbing film is evidently a labour of love for Ed Harris, who spent ten years and his own money getting Pollock to the screen. The result is a watchful patient movie, more interested in observation than explanation - less a biopic than a portrait. The approach is in keeping with Pollock's pronouncements, if not abstract expressionism per se: 'Paint is paint, surface is surface.' Harden invests all manner of subtleties in Krasner (winning an Oscar in the process), and the support from Tambor, Madigan and Connelly is first rate - but the film is at its best regarding the artist's relationship to the canvas: Pollock sizing up a frame, his super-confident approach to a line, or that cold winter morning when a dollop of white paint drips from his brush.