New York Stories

Talking about the first segment here. Awesome and controversial piece. Watching this only one time is not getting the value. And general context of watching should be different too so I'd recommend arbitrary time gap between sessions. Also spoilers here may spoil the second watch too.

The first segment of New York Stories is by Martin Scorsese. I watched the segment twice with some delay and wrote this later still.

Scorsese delivered on expectations about the main character. Messed-up, bold, even with criminalish theme in own way. Heights and lows, passions, chains and cages.

He is an established artist who runs some messed-up relational meat grinder in his studio. And he produces pieces for consumption by upper class New York who lives in their business meat grinder.

His assistant is not having a light cruise. But he is always a step ahead of her. And he does his part of life lessons as promised.

What caught my attention early is that Scorsese gives first person look of professional deformations of a painter. Notably scene near the elevator, probably tunnel-vision-like/flash-back incidents too. But there is also other enjoyable use of visual language by the director.

One hint was about the artist being a director himself. Also one can play with ideas of pure and clear canvas and the rich dirt of paint. Or with the energy, music and this navigation of bordering the known and waters of normal. The spirit of artist and explorer. Or on another hand darkness of perceived dysfunctionality and movement into nowhere. Or which one is the nowhere for an artist?

Music plays a big role - it definitely has meaningful cultural references that I didn't look into at this point. Also the main painting itself I interpreted differently both times I watched the piece. So there is even make-you-own-interpretation component because of the painting. Assistant's painting also has it in it. All this offers rewatchability but I assume the cost of rewatchability is that not all questions will be resolved and it should be expected and tolerated to some extent.

Also if some things or imlications here look a bit far-fetched then I should say that to do justice to this picture one should watch it in the spirit that it demonstrates.

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Other segments are nice too. They contrast well the first one. It is that the first piece has so many uncertainty unresolved that one can feel like other pieces sound too quiet and they are too plain. But that is the point I assume. So at some point I'll get to the ground of such genres too :).