Frida (2002)

April 9, 2025

This is an autobiography of the famous Mexican painter Frida. There’s so much to say about this movie — I really like it. It’s special and unique, not your standard Hollywood schlock. I love the camera work — it’s dynamic, with many cool angles. For example, right at the beginning there’s a really creative, abstract puppeteering scene. (Other visually striking shots can be found at 40:20, 1:10, 1:18, 1:46, and 1:56.)

Also, Schopenhauer gets mentioned — I really want to read him. But how can you read Schopenhauer without having read Kant? And how can you appreciate Kant if you don’t know the philosophers who came before him, like Hegel? But how can you appreciate Hegel’s idealism without understanding the fundamental divide between the empiricists and the rationalists? And you can’t understand that without grasping the philosophical model of their age — Christianity. But to appreciate Christianity, you need to understand Neoplatonism. And for Neoplatonism, you need the Stoics. And for the Stoics, Aristotle and Plato. So basically, we need to read the entire Western philosophical canon before we can ever properly read Schopenhauer. Sigh. I got sidetracked.

I love the music — Spanish, Mexican… are these Flamenco or Mariachi influences? Maybe it’s because I play guitar, and because I learned on Spanish flamenco, I have a certain fondness for it. But when I hear the guitar shimmering — it’s pure bliss. The music fits beautifully with the actors’ accents in the English dub, which still sounds distinctly Spanish to me.

I especially appreciated the dance sequence in the first quarter of the film — the cinematography paired with the Mexican music, the subtle eroticism — perfect. Also noteworthy: I loved the imagined dialogues people in the 1920s might have had about socialism and the rise of Stalin.

In general, this movie has such a wonderful vibe — the 1920s in Mexico, with the architecture, the music, the actors, the dialogue, the political atmosphere, the paintings, the drinking, the bars, the parties. 9/10.