Tales of two lives

Two reclusive artists, two different lives. Both committed to truth. And two actors who bring the lessons of their lives alive on screen. GOWRI RAMNARAYAN looks at the surprise nominees in this year's Oscars.

AT the Oscar nomination ceremony (February 1) you saw the telecasters thrown off gear by the inclusion of Javier Bardem and Ed Harris among the contenders for Best Actor, with roles in films that "four and a half people had seen". Both "Before Night Falls" and "Pollock" are based on literary works - the former on the haunting memoirs of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, and the latter on the Pulitzer prize-winning biography of the enigmatic, self-destructive artist "Jackson Pollock: An American Saga". Bardem and Harris project the tortured exaltations of reclusive creativity, exiled from their native worlds by their agitated imagination.

I had watched both the films at the Venice film festival last year, and was surprised to find their intense performances in highly personalised, offbeat productions on the Oscar list. Surely rival contenders Russell Crowe ("Gladiator"), Tom Hanks ("Castaway") and Geoffrey Rush ("Quills") fall more in line with the American Academy's preferences?

How did Ed Harris approach his directorial debut? And his portrayal of the enigmatic celebrity Jackson Pollock, a leader of the Abstract Expressionist school of painting?

He decided that he would not imitate or pretend. He would be himself while allowing Pollock's "experience on this earth to touch me, inspire me, lead me to an honest, true performance."

Most biofilms on artists concentrate on the protagonist's life, relationships and personality, some delving into psychical tracts. But Harris goes further. He wants to make you get a tactile grasp of the process of art-in-the-making; feel the paint dripping through your fingers; get your body to ache with the frenzied effort of bending over huge canvasses at long stretches; know the loneliness of pathbreaking originality that simultaneously longs for isolation and adulation.

Taking over a decade to read and ruminate on the subject, Harris built himself a studio to get acclimatised to the techniques of painting. He wanted to internalise those impulses which drove Pollock to do what he did, despite the initial misreadings and abuse. Discloses Harris, "That aspect of his being: desperately needing approval and yet offering only truth to be approved - drew me to him."

This prevents deadening documentation. We see the conflicts which break up Pollock's marriage to artist Lee Krasner (who neglected her career to promote her husband's), his infatuation with young Ruth Kligman, and death in a car accident as happening to a man who cannot separate his life from the art he practises.

Characters like the kooky, influential art patron Peggy Guggenheim, perceptive, plainspeaking art critic Clement Greenberg, even archrival Willem De Kooning, become mirrors to the Pollock struggle. There are unforgettable visuals of the artist painting in the open on a sheet of glass, whose transparency allows photography from above and below, creating the Pollock myth on the screen before our eyes - as did lensman Hans Namuth's pictures and short film back in the past.

What makes the film stand out? Its truth to the factual and attitudinal particulars of the period in which it is set(1940s- 50s), and its vision in arriving at something like insight above and beyond those hard details.

The best tribute to Spanish actor Javier Bardem comes from director and celebrity painter Julian Schnabel, who says, "Sometimes Bardem IS Arenas". He also has a more difficult task than Harris in a less crafted (if more exuberant) film "Before Night Falls" - all jerky narrative and splintered imagery. A half hour's cut would sharpen focus.

Based on the memoirs of Cuban novelist/poet Reinaldo Arenas, the film pays tribute to the spirit which never lost its tangy humour and thirst for beauty despite squalor, poverty, persecution and exile. An initial, riotous supporter of the Revolution later harassed for subversive writing and homosexuality, his works banned and himself jailed, Arenas was no stranger to forced labour and the worse horrors of betrayals by comrades. The actor moves from the writer's elation to despair as he seesaws through multi-step disillusionments in the socio-politico-ideological upheavals, of which he is observer and victim. Working in secret and smuggling manuscripts abroad was the only option. ("Before Night Falls" was written in daylight while hiding in a suburban park in Havana). Deported with criminals to the U.S., he died of AIDS in obscurity.

Bardem brings strength and conviction to his role, as also wistful charm and winsome innocence.

Arenas wrote: "Two attitudes, two personalities, always seem to be in conflict throughout our history: on the one hand the incurable rebels, lovers of freedom and therefore of creativity and experimentation; on the other, the power hungry opportunists and demagogues...always the same rhetoric, the same speeches, always the drums of militarism stifling the rhythm of poetry and life." Do we need to look further to know the whys of artist Julian Schnabel's fascination for the Cuban penman? The rebel writer had "died broke and alone and far off from the place where he began to dream " but was still "an emblem of endurance".

Both Pollock and Arenas betray anguished vulnerability in death - through suicide and car crash. Both Harris and Bardem delight in showing us how they leave hope behind through the assertive act of creative expression.

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