Speaking Silence

Silence spoke in this film. The two main characters, Frida and Diego, were not strangers to verbal expression. They communicated colorfully with each other, but the silence did another kind of talking. It expressed a kind of tenderness that can’t be expressed with words, or risks being sentimental if done. This tenderness gave them greater dimension as characters. As we discussed in class, each of us has a persona according to the situation we are in. Frida is a lover, a daughter, an activist, and an artist. In her personas as lover and artist is where these silences could be heard the loudest. Frida’s silence in the film lets the viewer see into her artist persona—a very personal persona that can’t “relate” to any other character through dialogue or relationship because it’s inside of her.

In a scene following the accident, she is in a full-body cast at home. Her boyfriend tells her he is leaving her and leaving the country. Her art becomes so intricately part of both her physical and emotional pain. In silence, with only her in scene, many days and nights pass, and we see her entire cast filled with butterflies. We also see her drawing her foot, her only exposed body. We learn that in these quite spaces she creates art, and through the symbolism of what she creates, we get a glimpse into who Frida really is, portrayed through her artist self.

When she’s pregnant, and frustrated with New York, in a silent solo scene in the bathtub, Frida seems reflective, and then she imagines the piece of art we are shown next: her Mexican dress hanging on the clothing with the New York sky line behind it. It is a lonely and misunderstood, something she can’t always be with Diego and in her public personas where she is depended on to make people laugh, take care of people (Diego, her sister and father), accept infidelity, sing loudly, entertain guests, be fearless, perform.

Another great example of this kind of silence (art silence) was after the miscarriage. Diego cries as he holds her painting of the fetus. The painting really speaks for Frida and describes better than any dialogue could, the pain she feels.

In the wedding scene, another type of silence that is focused on in a loud room is the mother’s. She disapproves of the wedding and shows it through silence in a scene where everyone is laughing and celebrating except for her—she sits alone in the kitchen, watching. This was really powerful and skillful way to show her feeling without dedicating a lot of time to dialogue or a separate scene.

When Frida consoles her father after her mother’s death in the garden, she lets him speak and says nothing in the entire scene. She picks up a dead flower and puts it in her hair. This scene lets us see an emotional connection happen with her father. Her mother is even in the scene symbolically, through her garden, and the dead flower.

In my own work, I think I can play more with the silence and space in terms of setting—really using it to my advantage to express emotion and feeling. The color of a sky, the weather, the time of day, solitude—all of these things are picked up on film, using the lens to express tone. These details, because we can’t actually remember them, need to be imagined as in fiction. Writing silence can be done through form and sentence structure. Space. One word, or very short sentences can act as silence in the way they make big impact with few words. Literal silence, of course, can be described in a scene. In this manner, I could play with creating true silence, and not even giving access to inner dialogue, and really just letting the silence fill the space.