Issue Date: November 17, 2002

Julie Taymor: Painting a motion-picture portrait

Director Julie Taymor, of Broadway's "Lion King" fame, re-creates the surreal life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.

By Amy Dickinson

Geoffrey Rush, left, as Leon Trotsky, Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo, and Alfred Molina as Diego Rivera. Broadway's Lion King creator, Julie Taymor, put the art in the movie "Frida," about the Mexican artist. Photo by Peter Sorel/Miramax

An early scene in Julie Taymor's new film, "Frida", is a slow-motion account of the 1925 bus accident that left 18-year-old Mexican artist Frida Kahlo scarred and disabled. Kahlo is thrown through the bus and mangled as a soft spring rain of flower petals and flecks of gold dust drifts down onto her bloody body. The imagery is at once surreal, beautiful and grotesque, like something you might see at an exhibition of Kahlo's work.

Her injuries, which led to more than 30 operations, caused Kahlo lifelong physical and emotional pain -- and helped drive her artistically. "This is an amazing woman who transcended the pain and the darkness of her life and turned it into art," the director says.

"Frida" is exactly the kind of film you would expect from Taymor. At 49, the native Bostonian is one of today's most celebrated and daring artists, having carved a path for herself as a designer and director of works whose intellectually demanding themes push the boundaries of mainstream theater and cinema. "Julie believes in intense personal expression, but she's a genius at creating an ensemble," says composer Elliot Goldenthal, her partner and frequent collaborator for the past 20 years. The two are now working on an opera based on the legend of "Beowulf"'s Grendel -- told from the monster's point of view. "There's this tremendous feeling of camaraderie when people work with Julie."

Her talent for creating a sense of place through color, light and costume and her reputation for innovative staging led Disney to offer Taymor the coveted job of adapting "The Lion King" for Broadway. That unusual pairing of artist and corporate giant catapulted the director onto the world stage.

Instead of a literal interpretation of the 1994 children's blockbuster, Taymor used symbols and ideograms to convey meaning, as well as experimental puppetry techniques where the audience was equally aware of both the puppet and the actor. The result was a long-running hit musical that appeals to infants and intellectuals. "The Lion King" earned Taymor two Tony Awards in 1998 (as director and costume designer) to go with her MacArthur "genius" fellowship, her Emmy and her two Obie awards.

Taymor had little success with her audacious debut film, Titus, in 1999. Her big-screen adaptation of Shakespeare's goriest play had barely finished unspooling at art houses before it disappeared. Shortly afterward, she was approached by actress-producer Salma Hayek, who had been developing "Frida" for seven years. "It was set up as a traditional biopic," Taymor says. "I added the art." Her idea was to turn it into a sweeping mural that offered a vivid glimpse into "the episodes of her life that she transposed into paintings."

Kahlo's paintings, like the self-portrait of her miscarriage, often explore loss and isolation. "Frida painted what she felt," Taymor says. "Flowers with thorns."

Frida Kahlo grew up during the Mexican Revolution. Before dying in 1954, at 47, she became a political radical; after her death, a feminist icon. She also suffered severe drug and alcohol problems and a tumultuous marriage to the legendary muralist (and womanizer) Diego Rivera. In that time, Kahlo created about 200 paintings; they now go for seven figures. (Madonna, who is a collector, tried for years to get a Kahlo movie made as a star vehicle for herself.)

"There is such complexity in her work. Her gaze is tough and direct," Taymor says of Kahlo. "I call her style 'sophisticated/naive.' It's similar to my own. She was jumping off of this religious style of painting that inspired her. The text she used in her paintings was all about flatness. No shadows. Pure, rich, organic colors. I wanted to use all of this visually."

The A-list cast, which includes Alfred Molina (as Rivera), Geoffrey Rush and Edward Norton, rehearsed and improvised for two weeks before shooting began in Mexico. "I pulled people together and said, 'Let's do this in Frida's style. Let's make this like her art,' " Taymor says.

Using photography and visual effects, Taymor brings a number of Kahlo's portraits to life onscreen by having actors move into and out of them. There is also a collage sequence of Diego as King Kong climbing the Empire State Building that's meant to show how Kahlo felt about her lover.

Taymor calls "Frida" a "wonderful love story," and it is on that level she most identifies with Kahlo. She notes that Nietzsche said happiness is deeper than sorrow. "What moved me the most was this love affair with Rivera that transcends infidelity," Taymor says. "There was this unconditional love between them. They were comrades, artists and true partners." Their non-competitive relationship mirrors that of Taymor and Goldenthal, who met in 1980 while preparing a performance piece set in an abandoned subway station. The couple, who share an apartment in Manhattan, sometimes work separately, on opposite coasts. They speak several times a day by phone.

"Frida became an icon, but not for commercial purposes. She was a wife and a painter first," Taymor says. "She was trying to tell her own story in her art."