Interview with Julie Taymor - About Frida Kahlo
TAYMOR: Well, I think there's a difference between how she was perceived in the '80s and how we are trying to deal with her now. Because she was used as a... Whatever the word feminist means to you, she was used as an icon of pain and suffering, really a woman who had tremendous abuse from her husband and survived, as I said, these accidents.
But I don't think that really is the heart of what Frida is. I think now what we can see as women is a woman who was outrageous, unique, talented, single minded, tenacious, and very feminine. Very caught up with her man. Very vulnerable. Very obsessive about her love for her guy.
So there was this... There is this incredible balance that's attractive to women, and to men, I think who see this story of someone who can do both, where you didn't have to say, "I'm a woman, so I'm going to be independent, and I don't need you as a male, and I can stand on my own." There's that. I mean, that's fine.
But I also think that Frida, she knew how to lay a table, she knew how to put flowers in her hair. What's mysterious about her is her gender bending, her bisexuality, her ability to be both macabre, grotesque and exquisitely beautiful, sublimely beautiful.
MOYERS: Let me show the audience one of the many powerful scenes in the movie.
SCENE FROM FILM: Get out! Get out! Get out!
MOYERS: I'm chilled every time I see that.
TAYMOR: Why?
MOYERS: I do not know. I was going to ask you why. Why is the haircutting so significant?
TAYMOR: Well, that particular scene happens after Diego has done the ultimate act of betrayal: he's made love with Frida's sister. And she leaves him. Frida leaves him.
And she. So much of Frida was about her physically, her hair, her braids, her clothes. So she cuts her hair off at that moment. And I found these paintings to be, because they're autobiographical, I could actually set them in the order. In the movie, I could put them when they happened.
So we used the hair cutting, I play with time, as you can see. She's we cut her hair, then we're advanced in the party afterwards and she's just, not drunk but getting to be alcoholic and trying to be with other people, she's very sad and depressed. And she takes the hair off that she knew Diego loved so much and she puts on her male suit and she plays with that other side of her, which is the masculine side of her.
But that particular shot, which is Selma Hayek in front of the mirror, Selma Hayek completely painted -- we painted her face, we painted her clothing, we forced perspective. When you talk about the theater, that is a forced perspective set.
There's nothing computer generated in this at all. This is almost totally theatrical. You use motion control, which means your camera moves once with the real Selma here, then you do the same action again with there, and you can then put them together. But it's so shocking to people because it looks like a two-dimensional painting for a moment and then you feel that it's a human being coming alive.
MOYERS: I'm chilled I think because of that and chilled because suddenly as you talk I think of, I'm seeing the melancholy. I mean, feeling the melancholy, the cut hair, the something lost, something gone, something that she loved, she shears. And then suddenly this figure comes alive for a brief moment and then lapses into the most utmost posture of despair and melancholy.
TAYMOR: And it's a little, little gesture. That's a little teeny gesture, just the collapse. It's so subtle just to go, oh, my God, she's alive.
MOYERS: When I saw it I thought that my friend George Lucas uses special effects to take us into the farthest reaches of outer space.
TAYMOR: Yes, right.
MOYERS: You use special effects to take us into the deepest recesses of the inner life, what the ancients used to call the soul. I don't know how you do it, but it happens when I'm watching that film.
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The rest of the interview is here....
TAYMOR: Well, I think there's a difference between how she was perceived in the '80s and how we are trying to deal with her now. Because she was used as a... Whatever the word feminist means to you, she was used as an icon of pain and suffering, really a woman who had tremendous abuse from her husband and survived, as I said, these accidents.
But I don't think that really is the heart of what Frida is. I think now what we can see as women is a woman who was outrageous, unique, talented, single minded, tenacious, and very feminine. Very caught up with her man. Very vulnerable. Very obsessive about her love for her guy.
So there was this... There is this incredible balance that's attractive to women, and to men, I think who see this story of someone who can do both, where you didn't have to say, "I'm a woman, so I'm going to be independent, and I don't need you as a male, and I can stand on my own." There's that. I mean, that's fine.
But I also think that Frida, she knew how to lay a table, she knew how to put flowers in her hair. What's mysterious about her is her gender bending, her bisexuality, her ability to be both macabre, grotesque and exquisitely beautiful, sublimely beautiful.
MOYERS: Let me show the audience one of the many powerful scenes in the movie.
SCENE FROM FILM: Get out! Get out! Get out!
MOYERS: I'm chilled every time I see that.
TAYMOR: Why?
MOYERS: I do not know. I was going to ask you why. Why is the haircutting so significant?
TAYMOR: Well, that particular scene happens after Diego has done the ultimate act of betrayal: he's made love with Frida's sister. And she leaves him. Frida leaves him.
And she. So much of Frida was about her physically, her hair, her braids, her clothes. So she cuts her hair off at that moment. And I found these paintings to be, because they're autobiographical, I could actually set them in the order. In the movie, I could put them when they happened.
So we used the hair cutting, I play with time, as you can see. She's we cut her hair, then we're advanced in the party afterwards and she's just, not drunk but getting to be alcoholic and trying to be with other people, she's very sad and depressed. And she takes the hair off that she knew Diego loved so much and she puts on her male suit and she plays with that other side of her, which is the masculine side of her.
But that particular shot, which is Selma Hayek in front of the mirror, Selma Hayek completely painted -- we painted her face, we painted her clothing, we forced perspective. When you talk about the theater, that is a forced perspective set.
There's nothing computer generated in this at all. This is almost totally theatrical. You use motion control, which means your camera moves once with the real Selma here, then you do the same action again with there, and you can then put them together. But it's so shocking to people because it looks like a two-dimensional painting for a moment and then you feel that it's a human being coming alive.
MOYERS: I'm chilled I think because of that and chilled because suddenly as you talk I think of, I'm seeing the melancholy. I mean, feeling the melancholy, the cut hair, the something lost, something gone, something that she loved, she shears. And then suddenly this figure comes alive for a brief moment and then lapses into the most utmost posture of despair and melancholy.
TAYMOR: And it's a little, little gesture. That's a little teeny gesture, just the collapse. It's so subtle just to go, oh, my God, she's alive.
MOYERS: When I saw it I thought that my friend George Lucas uses special effects to take us into the farthest reaches of outer space.
TAYMOR: Yes, right.
MOYERS: You use special effects to take us into the deepest recesses of the inner life, what the ancients used to call the soul. I don't know how you do it, but it happens when I'm watching that film.
--------------------------------------------------------
The rest of the interview is here....