by Viv
How do artists express themselves? How do they stay motivated? What goes on inside their minds
as they visualize their emotions? With a sip of Courvoisier in a stained cognac snifter, he stomps his
foot, a jet of paint shoots out from a scattered tube of navy blue and adheres onto a pillar in the room.
A loft, a studio, a painting, an artist. We hop into Dobie Lionel’s world, experiencing the rhapsody he
composes in his frantic paint strokes through Scorsese’s creative and unpredictable editing rhythm.
The editing - quick cuts, montage, transitions, and superimposition - in Life Lessons is used as a strong
tool to externalize characters’ internal emotions and thoughts. It shows the connections between the
painting, the painter, and the things involved in the process of creating.
Dobie Lionel, a successful painter in NYC who has a major shown coming in three weeks is struggling
to paint. That’s because his assistant, Paulette, who gives him his inspirations is not around. Even when
she finally returned after Dobie’s persuasion, she solidly said she would not sleep with him. Therefore
his frustrating painting process became the main component of the numerous quick cuts in Life Lessons.
It always starts with blaring music on a portable tape player. Then, we see it cuts from the paint on the
palette to his paint strokes, repeat two times, then to the paint being splashed on to his clothes, his arms,
and his five thousand dollar Rolex watch. These quick cuts carried Lionel’s emotions at the moment and
delivered this frantic intensity to the audience.
There’s another montage that shows Paulette’s connection with Lionel and his painting. We see Paulette
angrily walks towards Lionel, who has completely immersed himself in painting with rock n roll music
playing on high volume. She yells his name three times, telling him to turn the music down, but she gets
no response. Frustrated, Paulette walks around to the front of the painting. This is when we start to see
her emotions changing as it cuts back and forth between Lionel painting on the canvas with crazy
movements and vibrant colors to Paulette’s facial expressions. With every few strokes of paint, Paulette
becomes a little more attracted to this piece of painting. This montage depicts the process of Paulette’s
frustrations dissolving as she builds connection with the creative process.
The transition in this film is also a cinematic technique to notice and admire. While many directors
and editors aim for invisible editing, Scorsese uses editing techniques to his advantage and make his
cuts unexpectedly. The transitions was used as a ticket to the character’s interior, or to show their
personal retrospections. One example from the film would be when Lionel said “I could do anything,
because I'm nothing. I'm the invisible man with you. Anything. Anything.” As the first “Anything” was
said, the camera zooms in on his face as the screen fades to black. Then, he says “Anything” once again
and the screen fades out to him standing in front of his painting. This scene lingered for a few seconds
before dissolving to Paulette sitting down half-naked in front of her painting. What’s the purpose of these
transition effects? What message is Scorsese trying to imply here? By piecing these shots together, we
can conclude that instead of doing anything for Paulette herself, Lionel would do anything for his art,
for whatever gives him the inspiration to paint, for anything that stimulates him and feeds his art -
Paulette.
When Paulette brought back the handsome and well-built young man to her room, Lionel had an
emotional turmoil inside him. He wants her desperately. However, with him not being allowed into
her bed and having to witness his muse pleasuring someone else, his urge never goes away and but
intensifies. Therefore he paints, visualizing all of the emotions churning inside him. Lionel walks
towards his painting, starts to swing and dab the paintbrush across the canvas. Then, we see
superimposition being used here as two translucent Lionels gradually appear on two sides of the screen,
painting with the original one as it increases in transparency. Now we see three Lionels painting
different parts at the same time, as if the frustration form his unfulfilled desire fuels his creativity and
make him paint ceaselessly. Just like what Richard Price had said in Martin Scorsese: A Journey, “You
need an erection to paint and this one never goes down because it never gets used.” By superimposing
Lionel multiple times in the same shot, the energy conveyed to the audience became two times more
effective and intense.
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