Need She Say More, Taymor?

Julie Taymor has an interesting background, not just in theater, but in puppetry, mime and dance. What do they all have in common? No voice of their own. Puppets are the loudest and someone talks for them, if at all. Mime and dance tell the story silently, through the body. All three are about body movement. All three require an understanding of visual communication. Taymor is a visual wizard.

In the movie, Frida’s character is revealed through silence, music and motion, often all three combined. How do we first meet her? Older Frida is in bed, being lifted to the back of a truck. She is obviously in pain with each bump or jostle, but she is stoic. She is even smiling about something. Instantly we learn crucial elements of Frida’s character without a word of description being uttered. Brilliant.

Cut to young Frida tearing down the hallway of her school. She runs into a teacher, apologizes, and rushes off. She is vivacious, rebellious, and original. She is always running (until she can run no more). She breaks the rules, calls Diego, “Panzón” (or Chubby), has sex in a closet, shows up dressed as a man, with penciled on mustache for the family photo. Again, very little dialogue is used here to develop her character. It is mostly visual, a force of nature in motion. We get a whole lot of Frida with very little said.

Then it slows down and Frida is in the darkroom with her father. This is the first sign of Frida, the artist. “I love this,” she says, holding up a photograph. “I like it too,” says her dad quietly. It’s a simple scene, understated, only two lines of dialogue, but it gives us a different Frida: how she is with her father, how she is with art. Wonderful.

We learn more about Frida’s relationship with art and pain when Alex, her boyfriend, tells her he is moving to Europe. She lies there broken to bits and put back together in a full body cast. She begins to sketch on her cast and tells him, “I want you to leave before I finish this butterfly.” At her darkest times, she turns to art. This huge emotional moment is delivered in the quiet sketching of the butterfly, rather than a loud, blistering rant. One calm line, one action but what an impact! It has such emotional resonance and again takes us deep into the core of the character.

By contrast, we learn about Diego primarily through dialogue. At the first party, Diego’s friend says to Frida, “No one thinks their stuff is any good except Diego. He’s the only one.” Later we see him surrounded by women and Diego’s X-wife, Lupe, tells Frida that he is a lady’s man. She says he is irresistible because he appreciates everyone’s imperfections. When Frida and Diego are to be married, we learn more about Diego through her parents’ argument. “He is generous,” says her father. “He has paid off our mortgage.” For the most part we are told who Diego is, not shown.

As things quickly fall apart in the marriage, due to Diego’s infidelities, we are given Frida’s anger through a drunken song and obvious fake flirting in the bar. In spite of her actions, we are told by her face that it is all for Diego’s benefit and that she really doesn’t intend to go through with it. Moments later, when Diego is insulted, she loyally throws her drink in the man’s face. She is clearly wrestling with her feelings about Diego and yet not a word is said about it.

One of the most powerful sequences is after Diego sleeps with her sister. We get a silent Frida with increasingly loud folklorico singing (Lila Downs, rockin’ it). She stares out the balcony at her exiled sister and then just shakes her head in disgust. As she aggressively chops off her hair, the music rises with shouts to match the emotion. She never speaks until the end of the scene when she screams, “Get out!” to the partygoers in her house.

With “Frida,” Julie Taymor has delivered a very powerful display of show and tell. She shows us Frida and tells us about Diego. The showing very powerfully brings Frida front and center, revealing so much of her essence, while the telling keeps Diego more two dimensional, sliding on and off stage as needed. By pairing the two techniques, rather than relying on only one throughout, she not only brings us a complex, visually powerful protagonist, but she also sets up a form which mirrors the dynamic of the content, building into the structure the conflict and tension we watch play out in the marriage.

So pick up those puppets, paint on your mime face and slip on your dance shoes, people, no matter how many folks accuse you of wasting your talents. You will show them yet.