Move Frida and the Mexican Culture in Which She Lived
Julie Taymor's "Frida" is (in addition to a biography of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo) a motion picture offering insight in Mexican culture and of the Central American society in general. The movie depicts the life of Frida Kahlo and how it was influenced by the fact that she was Mexican. The action in the script is contributed by characteristic Latin music in creating a perfect image of Mexico. Frida's tumultuous life along with the eclectic cinematic formulas succeeds in making the movie a hallmark of Mexican culture.
The movie displays Mexico in the first half of the twentieth century in an accurate manner. From the very first scene, when the camera pans on a typical Mexican garden, the public is without doubt expected to relate to a Mexican way of life. The animals and the vegetation are all characteristic to Central America. Then the public is presented with Frida, a woman whose appearance (ranging from her facial features and to her clothing) screams: "I was an authentic Mexican woman."
The movie is not necessarily focused on showing the public the exquisiteness present in Frida's paintings, but uses them as a mean to better acquaint the viewers with the painter's life and with the Mexican community.
To make a movie about Frida Kahlo would virtually mean that one has to get deeply involved in the Mexican culture, given the fact that the artist is representative when taking Mexican customs into consideration. The fact that the director uses a Mexican actress wearing traditional Mexican costumes for the lead role further increases the feeling that the viewers are not only watching a biographic movie, but that they are watching a true example of Mexican culture as it unveils before them, according to a script which is true to real-life events.
The vivid colors employed in the movie are also a reference...
Frida Kahlo- surrealist painter, cross- dresser, enthusiastic drinker and lover, inspiration for one of the greatest painters of the 20th century, Diego Rivera, icon, legend, communist activist and I know the list can go on. It is amazing how someone who only lived 47 years and whose life was a collection of operations and sickness could be such an active person. Yet, she was and was to become one of
Moreover, it was also during his final years in Europe that he developed his ideas about muralismo (mural art) as public art which would focus on the Mexican people (Brenner 280). He saw himself as a revolutionary who believed that all art was political propaganda thus he chose painting as his most important tool of expression because he thought that it was the easiest and most effective method of
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