Log

Scorsese’s film develops in parallel with Lionel Dobie’s large canvas as the painter builds it up in thick, muscular layers over three weeks leading up to an exhibit.

We see the painting in various stages as the figure of a suspension bridge eventually comes into view, and Scorsese, here working with Nestor Almendros, draws on a wide range of stylistic maneuvers (irises, speed changes, elliptical edits, sweeping and calligraphic camerawork) to establish the space surrounding the work in Dobie’s studio as charged and dynamic.

The work in progress in turn parallels the splitting up of a couple, Dobie (Nolte) and his young assistant and muse Paulette (Rosanna Arquette), who are already on the outs when the film begins, just as the painting has already commenced with bare brushstrokes of black.

The film alternates between moments of creation — to the sounds of rock music, rhythm and blues, and opera booming from Dobie’s tape player — and moments where Dobie humiliates himself with Paulette either in private or in public.

Finding excuses to stumble into her bedroom, giving her advice on how to handle her troubles with a new boyfriend, offering feedback on her own fledgling craft, Dobie is as desperate to hang on to Paulette and to sleep with her again as he is to finish the painting. And Scorsese gives form to this feeling of abject desire by conveying the intensity of Dobie’s look, fleeting glimpses that single out and examine details of Paulette’s figure and gestures.

Two pivotal moments occur near the canvas as Dobie is in the midst of painting it.

In the first, Paulette marches to Dobie’s workspace, apparently ready to declare something decisive, perhaps that she is leaving New York. Yet Dobie, immersed in his painting, doesn’t notice her, and he doesn’t hear her shouts over the music (Bob Dylan performing a live version of “Like a Rolling Stone”). She goes to turn down the volume but then stops and observes his inspired fit of productivity, the “live” music matched exuberantly to the images of Dobie working paint into the picture in half-controlled but acute brushstrokes, his whole arm swinging from the shoulder.

Caught in the charged environment of Dobie’s work, her sadness and frustration temporarily evaporate; an eroticized sense of pleasure falls over her, the result of a mysterious seduction effected by the music, Dobie’s inspired movements, the color and texture of the paint (and given the implied history of the couple, we understand this isn’t the first time this has happened). This intensely lyrical moment seems to convince Paulette to stay in her situation for a while longer, an upshot that Scorsese underscores with a subtle continuity of gesture between successive shots from Dobie’s brushstroke to Paulette, now in the next scene, applying lip gloss for a night out.

In the second moment, Lionel, close to completing his canvas, has a harsh and painful exchange with Paulette, who is taking her things from his loft. The same Dylan recording plays, but Lionel’s brushwork is more labored, deliberate. In this scene, we never see Dobie’s brush make contact with the surface of the work. When he paints, the camera watches him coldly from behind the canvas, and when we do see the face of the painting, Lionel pauses to bitterly explain a thing or two to Paulette. As she walks away, his brushwork becomes more violent and he mutters an insult under his breath. He furiously smears a mix of black and mint green onto the canvas with his bare hand, as if abusing it, until he restrains himself.

At the opening of his show, Dobie, standing alone, eyes the finished work and is pleasantly disturbed by the hand of a young woman reaching into the frame and squeezing his — hoping some of his talent will rub off, as she nervously explains. In these closing moments, Dobie’s acutely perceptive look returns to caress the girl’s neck, shoulder, and lips. “I need an assistant,” he tells her. Procol Harum’s plangent “A Whiter Shade of Pale” returns and dominates the sound track, not so much bookending the film as renewing the conditions for Dobie’s creative process, the relationship it requires, as destructive on both parties as it is galvanizing.