A newly-released documentary feature on the life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is streaming on Prime Video. Now there are documentaries and there are documentaries. Some are politically or events-motivated, and the filmmakers squeeze every penny from their restricted budgets to make their arguments in a terse, straight-forward manner. Other documentaries, such as Frida, have generous budgets. This manifests itself in two ways.
One. In the opening credits we see Brian Grazer and Ron Howard listed as executive producers. Their listing implies that Hollywood money has been made available for this project.
Two. The animation in Frida and computer colorization of newly-generated and stock images are absolutely beautiful. It would be difficult to produce such artful images without a laboratory budget.
Director Carla Gutierrez has an impressive filmography. She was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for her editing of RBG in 2019. She won the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award this year for Frida.
Frida is an amalgam of striking, often animated, artist conceptions done in tribute to Kahlo’s paintings, as well as rare archival footage and photographs, and commercial stock footage and photographs. The colors are vivid, and the choices made for restrained colorization are keen.
All this nice-looking footage would mean less if the documentary didn’t offer an interesting, accurate narration of Kahlo’s life. Gutierrez used Kahlo’s letters, writings, notebooks and her illustrated diaries to tell her story. A performer voices Kahlo. Other actors’ voice Diego Rivera and Andre Breton.
The viewer first sees Kahlo as a small child with a strong will. A decade or more later, she is cross-dressing in neatly-fitted mens suits. As a teen, she joins the Communist Party. One day, dressed in female garb, she brings samples of her artwork to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, and so begins a lifelong relationship. The film not only covers Frida’s life; it also gives the audience a slice or more of Diego Rivera’s nature and lifestyle.
In an hour and a half, this documentary covers Kahlo’s and Rivera’s marriage/divorce/marriage. It digs deep into Kahlo’s inner being and her philosophies. When she was quite young, she was victim of a bus crash, badly hurt. She lived a life of chronic spinal, pelvic, and leg pain. These conditions affected her ability to give birth. The film covers so many aspects of her life, including her sexual encounters with men and women. And still, there is time to concentrate on the nature of her artwork.
Frida takes viewers close to, even occasionally inside its subject. The research done to create this movie is inspirational. One might check out the end credits for the long list of archives and commercial and private collections that were searched and tapped to bring forth such a quality documentary. Through this film, many who will have known Frida Kahlo as the Mexican painter with a single, uninterrupted eyebrow can learn about the woman and the artist, behind the eyebrow.
Audrey Kupferberg is a film and video archivist and retired appraiser. She is lecturer emeritus and the former director of Film Studies at the University at Albany and co-authored several entertainment biographies with her late husband and creative partner, Rob Edelman.
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