Learning Lessons

Once asked by a reporter, "how do you know when you're finished?" the 1950s painter Jackson Pollock replied, "how do you know when you're finished making love?" These two questions get at the crux of Martin Scorsese's short film "Life Lessons" in the collection New York Stories (1989). Nick Nolte stars as the wide-eyed, bushy bearded painter Lionel Dobie who is unprepared for his upcoming show and trying to rekindle his romantic relationship with his assistant Paulette, played by Rosanna Arquette in a gutsy, if vulnerable, performance.

Nick Nolte amazes as the self-centered, albeit needy, painter as he shuffles through his New York loft playing tape after tape of soundtrack worthy music from Ray Charles to Bob Dylan. Lionel is earnest, but desperate and Paulette, at the end of her rope, both teases him throughout the film and dismisses his advances. Arquette is convincing as the beautiful novice who both welcomes the chance to rub shoulders with the elite, yet ultimately is overwhelmed by the experience and is unsure of how to conduct herself in circle after circle of acclaimed artists.

Even more then the story and the performances, it is really the cinematography that makes this film worthy of repeat viewings. Scorsese peppers the film in irises which are meant at times to pinpoint the correlative of Lionel's fixation or to simply focus on specific details in his apartment like a crystal glass of whiskey smothered in paint. There are the track shots that follow Lionel as he walks the length of his enormous canvas that allow the audience to see what he sees, but from a removed, third person point of view. These shots lend a kind of intimacy to our relationship with the protagonist. We invest in Lionel's need to determine when he is finished, in his art and in his relationships, but allow the film the time to answer those questions for us.