• Frida with her father in the dark room—Viewing her father’s photographs—the photographs making contact with the viewer—when the camera zooms in on Diego’s murals or Frida’s paintings—Frida’s paintings especially when the camera does a close up – the scene when she is in New York and looks outside to the clothes line with her blouse hanging on it and when she cuts off her hair—I think the director was successful at using silence and space to connote the fusion of the artistic realm with the actual reality of the experience. The camera seemed to focus on the scenes where Frida’s interior/subconscious expressed.
• The dream or nightmares revealed in cryptic images of the Day of the Dead characters putting Frida back together with strange music and strange noises in the background (this scene expands integrates both the dream world and the real world was for me another use of silence. Silence is was at work during the trolley scene. The accident happens in slow motion. There is an aspect of complete and stunning abandonment. There is nothing the viewer can do but witness. The accident scene is full of contractions. The bird is set free, the image of the soul leaving the body? There are the gold speckles flying and landing on the body of Frida. The accident doesn’t expose dead bodies or the injured or loud sirens — it’s not about blood and guts or violence invoking shock and horror from the viewer, but perhaps a faithfulness that Frida will survive broken and not broken.
• Music in the film connects passion – music like the art transcends words, language, gets at the core of Frida’s and Diego’s feelings. The singers, photos, paintings, music are supporting the subconscious and interior of Diego and Frida. The music is intense large and in some ways I think of the music as another silent factor in the film because it transcends thought, language…takes viewer and character to the core of interior.
• In my writing I would hope to set the tone by the lyrical rhythm of the syntax. To enact silence I would like to leave some conversations dangling, that the characters really don’t know why they are saying what they are saying and discover later in the text what they really mean, what they’re really after.
• Silence and space on the page. Choosing the right word that could connote double meanings and having more than one narrator could engage reader to question the characters more. I want my characters to be real and on the edge of being reliable. I want them to have flaws and have many dimensions. Lots of grays in the text and plot.
Welcome to the Blog for Craft of Creative Non-Fiction at Mills, English 226, Fall 2011. Here is where you write your reader responses for the books we are reading this semester. These responses examine the scaffolding of the book in regards to presence and identity of the narrator. Don't forget to respond to your colleagues' blogs as well.
Penina,
ReplyDeleteI am glad you brought up music. Music is one thing that film can include that writing absolutely cannot (literally). But, can we make music on the page in other ways? Can this be done with rhythm, perhaps? I don't know, but it's an interesting discussion.
hey penina and msvalentine,
ReplyDeletemusic was on my list of things to get into. while there was a score throughout, i was most tuned in near the end of the film, when the background music moved into the foreground, created intimacy.
in writing music, rhythm seems imperative, and the question seems to be, then, how do we create the rhythym on the page? my instinct here is to look to poetry, to see in what ways poetry creates rhythm and tempo and dissonance and harmony and crescendo and decrescendo and vibrato - through repetition? rhyme? alliteration? tone? emphasis?
i also think a useful direction to move in is how the music on the page impacts the characters/narrator. oftentimes when i think about music i think about the music first and then how i am affected by it, how i embody it, how it makes me move or not move.
thanks for bringing this up,
michelle
"There is nothing the viewer can do but witness."
ReplyDelete"music like the art transcends words, language"
I appreciate these two points of yours, Penina.
In regards to the second, the film's dialogue was in mostly in English but the song lyrics were in Spanish. For a viewer who doesn't speak Spanish this would have an even more discordant affect.
I remember one part of the movie where the song was "Paloma Negra" performed by Chavela Vargas. This stood out to me because one of the pet names Frida had was "Paloma".
There is an inner (silent)contemplation a listener has when hearing the word Paloma in the song and remembering Paloma as one of Frida's names.
I also really enjoyed your ideas noted here: "In my writing I would hope to set the tone by the lyrical rhythm of the syntax. To enact silence I would like to leave some conversations dangling, that the characters really don’t know why they are saying what they are saying and discover later in the text what they really mean, what they’re really after." I totally want to read this work!!!
i hate to be trite but i'm jumping on everyone else's bandwagon. You are spot on about the images and the music. And the idea of music in the writing is a salient one and how we create it, a great thing to explore. Good notes.
ReplyDelete@Saillor, wasn't Chavela one of Frida's lovers back in the day? I think i read that somewhere but chronologically it doesn't make sense.
e