Local Color (2006): Choosing Beauty Over Confusion
An uplifting scene about connecting with simple beauties that touch the heart and moving away from abstract ideas that busy the mind
My goal with Scene Lift is to connect with the spirit of uplifting movies and scenes. After reading this reflection, feel free to join me in the comments where I relate the spirit of Local Color to my own life.
Local Color is about the relationship between an old Russian painter (Nicholi) and a teenage boy (John) who aspires to paint as beautifully as him. Although Nicholi’s family was murdered in “the purges” during Stalin’s reign of the Soviet Union, he continues to focus on the simple beauty of life in his representational paintings of natural landscapes. Meanwhile, the modern art world focuses on ways to abstract nature. One leads to connection, the other separation.
John is rare in that he has not adopted a separation complex even though his dad does not support his love of painting and physically abuses him. He continues to paint and have faith in beauty. However, it seems he can’t get away from abstraction entering his art — the same abstraction that was praised by art critics in the 1970s when this movie takes place. He will make tree branches artificially crooked, make clouds square-like, and impose one idea onto another.
To break this modern habit of forced complexity and become a better painter, he charms Nicholi into taking him on as a student. They spend the summer at Nicholi’s farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania where John has the experience of a lifetime and helps heal Nicholi’s broken heart.
In one scene, John is painting outside the farmhouse. He has imposed one landscape onto another in an unconscious attempt to make it abstract and “relevant”. Nicholi immediately identifies the impact of modern art. “Never forget what I’m about to tell you,” he says, and proceeds to shout in gibberish. “I didn’t even understand one word of that,’ John laughs. “You were just making weird noises.”
“Because I am not speaking clearly, I am not saying anything,” Nicholi says.
Overwhelmed by intellect. Abstracted by confusion. Artsy fartsy, the common man might say. To Nicholi, that is what “art” became during the end of his time.
“Art is dead,” he says earlier in the movie when accepting John into his home for the first time. He then enters into a near-monologue about why this is so, saying that critics have made art a source of judgment and social commentary rather than a source of honoring the beauty that always surrounds us.
“If you see beauty everywhere, your soul is set free. The job of the artist is to uplift man’s soul.”
Nicholi believes that modern artists have lost their way, messing with people’s heads instead of pulling on their hearts. Either something unclear and weird is happening, or everything is happening everywhere all at once. This weirdness is represented in a scene when Nicholi is judging a local art show and comes across a painting that is just black paint on canvas.
INT. ART SHOW - DAY
Nicholi approaches a well-groomed man with a flowered shirt who's flamboyantly looking at an all-black canvas from different angles while smoking a tiny cigarette.
NICHOLI
Are you the artist?
ARTIST
Yes.
NICHOLI
What’s the point?
ARTIST
Well, you see, I’m exploring the two-dimensionality of the canvas.
NICHOLI
You mean its flatness?
ARTIST
Well, yes.
NICHOLI
But it’s already fucking flat. What’s there to explore?
ARTIST
Yes, but to EXPLORE that flatness.
NICHOLI
(stammering)
I’m lost.
The artist takes a drag of his cigarette.
ARTIST
(contemplating)
You see, it’s a journey that I take.
NICHOLI
(astounded)
A journey?
ARTIST
Yes, the exploration of what the thing already is.
NICHOLI
Which is flat.
ARTIST
Yes.
NICHOLI
So, where do you come in?
ARTIST
I explore that.
NICHOLI
What it is already?
ARTIST
Yes. Do you understand?
NICHOLI
No.Eventually, he loses his patience at the art show and puts the first place award on a spinning fan. He stumbles out of the show drunk, saying that there’s a war between craziness and sanity and craziness is winning.
Obviously, Nicholi is not dealing with modern art well. Perhaps the abstract nature represents the confusion that caused his family to be murdered. In either case, he wants no part of it. He would rather continue to honor the simple beauties of the world through representational art and not support art that serves the intellect and consensus of the critics.
Which type of art do you engage with? Which type of content? Why?
Movies are the form of art I interact with the most and Local Color helped me realize why I no longer choose to watch movies by A24, the studio that released Everything Everywhere All At Once last year. I chose not to see this movie based on the name of it, the craziness depicted in the trailer, and the hopelessness that many A24 movies left me with.
With directors like Martin Scorcese praising A24 movies like Hereditary, I don’t doubt they are well-made films. But the feelings that come from them are not uplifting, and I agree with Nicholi that the job of artists is to uplift people — not make people have “dream nightmares in the middle of the day.” This is what Scorsese said Hereditary achieved, along with some metaphors about the family dynamic. I think Nicholi would call him full of shit.
Of course, horror-driven metaphors and abstraction can be interesting. I used to choose abstraction by watching movies like Mulholland Drive, buying prints by Salvadore Dali, and listening to experimental music with “weird noises” (as John in Local Color might put it). It was amusing at the time. Not any longer.
These days, I enjoy art that’s clear in its meaning. Local Color represents that type of art. It’s art with a clear message — follow your heart, not your head — and a clear story: one about an older person helping a younger person discern beauty from bullshit in a busier, noisier world.
I’m grateful that I now listen to less of that noise and participate less in the busyness. Social media, news, politics, activism, criticism, grinding, hustling, fighting, hating, and always having an opinion.
The consequence of this approach is having difficulty connecting with the majority of others who are still attached to the busyness and the noise. This is an act of separation on my part — me thinking that others are trapped in The Matrix or something while I’m on my way out. So I do my best to open to what connects us all. And whatever that is is not abstract. It’s found with something as simple as a smile.