Frida

[jchrisobrien]

Frida is a movie that opens a window to something greater than yourself. You can stand by the window and feel the breeze and light on your face. The rain can sting your skin with icy knives. You can slide your hand along the ledge reach outside to the world that is waiting for you. But when the movie ends, the window closes, and you're stuck with yourself again. Trapped in your flesh.

Frida showed you the lives of two artists. Both filled with visions and talents. Both flawed and very, very human. Their lives held dazzling flashes of beauty, but for every drink of beauty there was a deep draught of pain. Diego couldn’t remain faithful to save his life, and still she loved him. Frida's life was filled with physical pain and emotional wounds. Yet she filled her life with the search for passion and beauty and truth.

I'd like to think that any of us could live our lives that way. I see people I know living that kind of life, and what it can cost them. And I wonder: can I live that way? Is it too late?
That's a rhetorical question: it's never too late. It's just a matter of beginning.

Comments

[silas7.livejournal.com]

The first two certainly apply. They are devoted to their air, and are passionate about it, but they also say that it is a discipline too. They have to paint all the time, including making bad pieces, until something good comes from it. The intensity that they approach life is intoxicating, but like wine it can lift you up and smash you down, and it did that to them in equal measure.

But also, Frida was a fighter. She lived through the pain of her accident, and didn't quit. She married a man who could not be faithful to her, and rather than let it crush her she found her own lovers, and loved him still, while recognizing his faults. She could have chosen to focus on the negative things in her life, but instead she embraced the light in her life. It was Diego who left her, and then begged to come back. She found such beauty in the world around her, and even the pain of her body or her unfaithful husband couldn't shake that from her.