Frida

Early in their marriage, Frida Khalo tells Diego Rivera she would like him to be “not faithful, but loyal.” She puts herself in that same field. Roger Ebert describes that these types of faithfulness “is a bourgeois ideal that they reject as Marxist bohemians who disdain the conventional. But passionate jealousy is not unknown to them, and both have a double standard, permitting themselves freedoms they would deny the other.” During the runtime of “Frida,” released in 2002, Kahlo has affairs with Leon Trotsky and Josephine Baker (Ebert said, “not a shabby dance card”), but gets mad at Diego for his infidelities.

Julie Taymor’s biographical movie tells the story of a famous life. Frida Kahlo, played by Salma Hayek, born of a German Jewish father and a Mexican mother, grew up in Mexico City at a time when it was a source of exile and trickery. As a student, she goes to see the famous muralist Diego Rivera at work, fearlessly calls him “fat” and knows that he is the one she wants to marry.

Then she is almost dies in a bus accident that breaks her back and cuts her body with a steel rod. She was never to be able to walk again in her life and for long periods had to wear a body cast. Taymor shows a bluebird flying from Frida’s hand at the time of the accident, and later gold leaf falls on the cast: Ebert said, “She uses the materials of magic realism to suggest how Frida was able to overcome pain with art and imagination.”

Rivera was already a legend when she met him. Ebert describes, “Played by Alfred Molina in a great bearlike performance of male entitlement, he was equally gifted at art, carnal excess and self-promotion.” The first time Frida sleeps with him, they are discovered by his wife, Lupe, played by Valeria Golino, who is furious, obviously, but that is Diego’s power over women that after Frida and Diego get married, Lupe brings them breakfast in bed (“This is his favorite. If you are here to stay, you’d better learn how to make it.”) Frida’s paintings often show herself, alone or with Diego, and imitate her pain and delight. They are on a smaller level than his famous murals, and her art is overlooked by his. His reputation goes to a notorious incident, when he is hired by Nelson Rockefeller, played by Edward Norton, to create a mural for Rockefeller Center, and daringly includes Lenin among the figures he paints. Ebert said, “Rockefeller commands the mural to be hammered down from the wall, thus making himself the goat in this episode forevermore.”

The director, Julie Taymore, became famous for her production of “The Lion King” on Broadway, with the amazing combination of actors and the animals they played. Ebert noted, “Her film "Titus" (1999) was a brilliant re-imaging of the Shakespeare tragedy, showing a gift for great daring visual inventions.” She also shows the realism here to say the imaginary colors of Frida’s imagination. However, real life itself is strange in this marriage, where the couples build houses side by side and connect them by a bridge between the top floors.

Ebert said, “Artists talk about the "zone," that mental state when the mind, the eye, the hand and the imagination are all in the same place and they are able to lose track of time and linear thought. Frida Kahlo seems to have painted in order to seek the zone and escape pain: When she was at work, she didn't so much put the pain onto the canvas as channel it away from conscious thought and into the passion of her work.” She needs to paint, not just to “express herself” but to live, and this sis her closest relationship with Rivera.

Biographical films of artists are always difficult, because the connections between life and art always seem too easy and superficial. The best ones take us back to the work itself and tell viewers to sympathize with its artists. Ebert noted, “"Frida" is jammed with incident and anecdote--this was a life that ended at 46 and yet made longer lives seem underfurnished. Taymor obviously struggled with the material, as did her many writers; the screenwriters listed range from the veteran Clancy Sigal to the team of Gregory Nava and Anna Thomas, and much of the final draft was reportedly written by Norton.” Sometimes we feel like the film twists from one lively event to another without break, but sometimes it must have seemed to Frida Kahlo as if her life also did.

The film opens in 1953, on the date of Firda’s only one-woman show in Mexico. Her doctor tells her she is too sick to attend it, but she has her bed lifted into a flat-bed truck and carried to the gallery. This opening scene gives Taymor with the group for the movie’s amazing ending scenes, where death itself is seen as another work of art.

I was in the beginning of the second year in college when I found out about Frida Kahlo’s famous accident on the bus, where I had to step out of the class because I was getting sick to my stomach hearing the details. I’m not good with graphic, detailed information because I always feel as if I’m going to throw up hearing it. I’m not kidding; I get pale and sweaty that I have to lay down for a bit to get it out of my head.

All of that aside, this is another good movie that I think everyone should watch. I think it’s Salma Hayek’s famous work and if you haven’t seen it, you should, especially if you know of Frida Kahlo, her artwork and her life story.

Look out next week to see what I will end “Salma Hayek Month” with.