Pollock, played by Ed Harris, is a restless abstract expressionist painter navigating the New York art scene in the 1940s, showing his work in occasional group exhibitions while trying to find a path that suits his impulsive style.
He shares a cramped apartment in New York City with his brother Sande and sister-in-law Arloie, and as Arloie prepares for a new baby, Pollock decides to move out on her behalf. Soon after, he encounters the gifted artist Lee Krasner, Marcia Gay Harden, whose presence and support begin to change the direction of his life. Pollock’s brother Sande has left for Connecticut to work building military gliders to avoid the draft, a move that underscores the tensions and compromises of the era.
A battle with alcoholism intensifies Pollock’s struggles. He’s found in a disheveled state by Sande and Lee, prompting Sande to tell Lee that Pollock has been diagnosed as “clinically neurotic.” Taking pity on him, Lee invites Pollock into her world, becomes his advocate, and takes on the role of his manager, offering a steadying influence as he hovers between creative fervor and self-destruction.
The drama deepens when Pollock’s old friend Reuben Kadish visits, bringing along Howard Putzel, who works for wealthy art collector Peggy Guggenheim. After Guggenheim views his paintings, Pollock lands a contract to exhibit his work, plus a commission to paint an 8 ft by 20 ft mural for her New York townhouse entryway. Yet his first exhibit fails to attract buyers, and after a New Year’s Eve party, a drunken Pollock nearly sleeps with Peggy. He then sinks into a stupor upon learning that Putzel has died, a blow that accelerates his downward spiral.
Pollock and Lee marry after Lee gives him an ultimatum to marry or “split up” as they prepare to move to Long Island. At Peggy’s home, Pollock brushes off art critic Clement Greenberg’s comments, resisting any push to alter his painting style to be more marketable. Greenberg predicts that Pollock’s fortunes will change with the upcoming Life magazine article and a forthcoming exhibition, a forecast that shapes their expectations for broader recognition.
As the relationship between Pollock and Lee grows strained—driven in part by Pollock’s flirtations with other women—he tries a variety of jobs to earn money, but his alcoholism repeatedly thwarts those efforts. He lies to Sande about his finances, a deception that improves only after the Life feature shines a brighter spotlight on him. Cinematographer Hans Namuth later films Pollock at work, but the documentary presence interrupts the spontaneity that defines his process. A moment of attempted abstinence backfires when Pollock relapses during a Thanksgiving gathering, ruining the meal and escalating the tension with Lee.
In a later sequence, Pollock signs a Life magazine copy for a fan at an art exhibit in 1950, a scene that pressingly places him in the center of the American art world. Five years after that exhibit, Clement Greenberg informs Pollock that the Partisan Review is perhaps favoring artist Clyfford Still, hinting at a shifting critical landscape and suggesting that Pollock’s originality could chart the next direction in modern art.
Pollock’s personal life grows more tumultuous as his marriage to Lee becomes increasingly strained due to her reluctance to have children. He begins an extramarital affair with Ruth Kligman, an abstract artist who enters his orbit and complicates his already fragile balance. In a pivotal moment in 1956, after a phone conversation with Lee while she is in Venice, Pollock tells Ruth, “I owe the woman something.” When Ruth brings along her friend Edith, the trio take a drive that ends in tragedy: Pollock, intoxicated, crashes the car, killing himself and Edith and leaving Ruth badly injured.
> I owe the woman something.
The film closes with a stark epilogue: Lee Krasner never remarries after Pollock’s death, enduring the loss while continuing to live with the legacy of his art and their shared story. The portrait that emerges is of a mercurial artist whose genius coexists with personal turmoil, the public’s hunger for his work, and the intimate costs paid within a life marked by passion, conflict, and fate.
