Frida

I first saw this film on a French language TV channel (in French) and was mesmerized by it. I don't speak French, but knew some basic details about Frida & Diego Rivera, had heard of the dust-up with Rockefeller and had seen Rivera's murals in Mexico City, so was able to follow most of the plot. Next day I ordered the DVD & played it (in English) over & over again till the fabulous music score & the song "Burn this bed, Burn it blue..." rang in my head for days.

The film is visually stunning (from the vibrant colours of the locations and costumes to Frida's paintings), the characters fascinating & the music score haunting.
It is set in the lively world of culture & society in Mexico between the two World Wars - a hotbed of politics, music, literature & avant-garde art - everybody who was anybody in the 1930's went to Mexico for a good time. It focuses on the tumultuous life of the Mexican-born artist Frida Kahlo, who was married to the larger-than-life muralist Diego Rivera.

Frida's work is very surrealist, very personal, exotic, original and unforgettable. The director Julie Taymor has done a wonderful job of suggesting how Frida's life experiences melded into her painting. Lesser artists since have imitated Frida's style, but none of them have portrayed the inner world of pain and blood as Frida did.
Taymor's commentary on the DVD is valuable for the additional insights it provides on Frida's art, life and times.

There are only 5 films produced so far in the 21st century that are worth the time it takes to watch them & I no longer recall what the other 4 are.

A beautifully illustrated coffee-table book "Frida Kahlo" was produced to accompany an exhibition of Kahlo's work at the Tate Gallery in London in 2005. I recommend it for those who wish to experience more of Frida's work without the expense of going to Mexico City.

The film Frida and the accompanying background material here is a visual entertainment that seems to be oriented to the current fascination with her art as an expression of inwardly turned, self-referential, and pyscholoigcal concerns. The acting, direction, and production design here are all masterful.

Yet, there seems to be a simplification to enable glorification. Frida emerges as a saint, a heroine, but not a real person. In fact, she seems unrecognizable compared with the versions of her life that were told and people who knew her before she became worthy of the same treatment as The Lion King. While lip service is paid to her disability and pain, one never sees the real pyschological expression of that pain that everyone who knew her talks about marking her personality. But then, this film seems to be faithful to current hipster's glib
reducation of Freida Kalho to a highly "collectable" stereotype.

People I knew who knew her 1938-1942 and the biographies that were written about her before she began to be taken up by the New York hipsters, tended to talk about how the pain and difficulty of her life were expressed in a personality that was not exactly the sweet, sunny, firm clear, fair and always just character portrayed in the movie. The condition created by the Frida Fad of the past 10 years has made her into such a non-person, such a glorified abstraction, that otherwise serious grownups who have no real knowledge other than she is now popular and "collectable" wince when you tell them people world wide for their warmth, judgement, and trust who saw her every day for years could say that Frida was not always fun to be around. No less than the Diego depicted in her film, Kahlo did not really understand the consequences her own personal picadillos and adventures could have on people who had more conventional views of life and love, and who needed stability in life.

The movie is either false or ignorant about why Trotsky moved out of the Blue House. He did not move out because of Natalia Sedova's anger over the affair. [ The affair really break Natalia's heart and almost caused a split among the Trotskys, although that split was healed. Trotsky is almost rapsodic in his diary when he realizes his love for Natalya is there emotionally and physically and they are still together.] Trotsky and the Riveras split due to a deep and public political disagreement over elections in Mexico. Diego was making public statements that gave people the impression that Trotsky was backing a right-wing candidate for President of Mexico that Trotsky stridently opposed. Moroever, Diego's actions gave the false impression that Trotsky was publically intervening in Mexican politics, something Trotsky resolutely refused to do. Both Trotsky and the Mexican section of the Fourth International, the world organization Trotsky founded, had to disassociate themselves from Deigo at this point.

This movie uses Kahlo's association with Trotsky to give a gloss to her and Rivera. Unlike the Mexican movie made about her entitled Freida (this is the name Kahlo was born with, not Frida), this film does not tell the view that in the late 1940s, Rivera and Kahlo became ultra-Stalinists. They revived their friendship with David Alfred Siqueros who had attempted to murder Trotsky. Frida Kahlo issued public statements denouncing herself for having had sex with Trotsky and pledged her eternal devotion to Stalin. Of course, this aspect of her life doesn't fit into the kind of marketable hagiagraphy that has less concern with the reality of a person and of politics than it does with a marketable image. It is true you do see a picture of Stalin on a canvas toward the end, but it is not clear to anyone who isn't already familiar with the story.

I also was disappointed in the actor they had playing Diego. He played his part extremely well, but he was just not the right person for anyone to think to be Diego. The person was an English actor, apparently of Italian or Spanish origin.

Diego was mostly if not entirely Indian, whereas Frida was actually half German Jewish. Diego actually did the rough outlines and instructions of his murals and then got very indigenous Indians to paint in the colors with their rough brush strokes.

This attempt to identify with the non-European art and culture and political identity of Mexico was a big part of what Diego and Frida were about, but it gets no play or reference in the movie. Frida adopted the regional dress of one of the most indigenous areas of Mexico,rather than follow the Europe-centered fashions of Mexico's intelligensia. Mexico is a nation where the the vast majority, the scores of millions of people of mixed and all Indian blood have traditionally struggled against an elite which emphasizes its "Spanish" ancestry. Diego's proclamation of his Indianness and his sucess in Mexico as a mostly Indian cultural figure, and Frida's decision to identify with this was central to their lives and impact on their times.

To me what is rather unfortunate is that while Kahlo's art was interesting and beautiful, and great in some ways, Diego is simply lost in all of this. He was one of the great artists of the 20th Century, far more significant than Kahlo in his impact on Mexican, Latin American, and world culture. Moreover, particularly for Mexicans and other Latin Americans, the cultural ideas about reclaiming the Indian identity and linking with the popular masses and the pre-Columbian cultures that he advanced were very important, not just for artists, but in political and literary circles as well. Diego played an important role fighting with his friend Andre Breton in charting an independent and radical artistic and intellectual response to Stalinist theory of "socialist realist" art. Pathfinder Press has just come out with a brand new updated and better noted and glosseried edition of Breton's What is Surrealism which contains the declaration on Art and Artists in the 20th Century that Deigo, Trotsky, and Breton wrote together.

Of course, all of Deigo's work dealt with the political struggle of Mexico and the world's working people to fight against imperialism and capitalism. This isn't very marketable among the upper middle class fadists at whom this film seems to aimed. They prefer a Frida and a Diego whose personal concerns about romance, sex, and personal fame are at the center of their lives, not two fighters for a socialist world!

First off,this is a DVD review not a film commentary.
This DVD release was a disappointment. I loved the film. It had great acting, beautiful cinematography, well written and well... it was just plain good. I say the DVD was disappointing for numerous reasons. First of it appears that the two disc set is offering you a lot of additional information. What it is actually offering is a lot of fluff. The extras contain absolutely nothing about the real life character that the film was about. The only information we get about the real Frida was a quick walkthrough of the Blue house. It would have been nice to get even a brief photo documentary highlighting her life. Another thing I was hoping to see on the DVD release was an art gallery of Frida's work. You would figure that a film about the artist would at least show her work on the DVD release. To me the extras were more about stroking the filmmaker's egos on a job well done than to honor the person the film was about.
This release is also a huge slap in the face to Spanish speaking buyers. Frida was a Mexican Icon, yet Miramax felt that the DVD release didn't need a Spanish language track. The release is only in English and French. Now does it make sense to honor Frida and neglect her native language on the DVD? I find it insulting, and I am not even Mexican.
To get down to it, the DVD is beautifully packaged but it is only a gilded wrapping. I expected more from a two-disc set than what I got. This release definitely does not do honor to the person from whose life they are profiting from. Don't get me wrong the film alone is worth picking up the DVD. But why should I have to pay for an extra disc that essentially is nothing more than the filmmakers patting themselves on the back?
If your going to buy it get it for the movie, not the supplements.