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Before Night Falls review
:. Director: Julian Schnabel
:. Starring: Javier Bardem, Olivier Martinez
:. Running Time: 2:13
:. Year: 2000
:. Country: USA
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In Before Night Falls, Julian Schnabel (Basquiat) has inventively adapted the memoirs of gay Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas into a beautiful film. It's not so much a chronicle of his life than it is a diary of images: from his early years in the lush Cuban countryside and his sexual initiation, moving on to his carefree life in Havana finding lovers, basking in the sun, and writing, the combination of which leads to years of imprisonment. Arenas left Cuba in 1980 during the Mariel Boatlift and the darkest period is of his final years in New York, devoid of sensuality and the lush environment of Cuba, before his suicide in 1990. Schnabel has brilliantly combined the poetry of Arenas' writing with his artistic eye to create a movie where the senses are needed as much as the mind in order to take it all in.
The early years of his life are devoted to the sensual landscape of his surroundings. The greenery, mud, and water are as much a part (if not more) of his life as his family. His artistic proclivities unsuitable for country life, he joins the Revolution and heads for Havana. It's here that Schabel offers a fiery portrayal of Havana's bacchanal lifestyle before the Revolution took over and the confusion of someone like Arenas who supported the Revolution and now finds himself well outside of its realms. Arenas revels in the hedonistic and then devotes his time to writing. Life under Havana's Saturnalia consists of the sea and sun, of casually engaging with other men, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. As in Strawberries and Chocolate, going to get ice cream seems to be a real meeting spot.
As Arenas dryly points out, "The Revolution wasn't for everybody." The combination of his writing, lifestyle, and friend's betrayal eventually lands him in a prison filled with real criminals. Given the release of Quills this year a few parallels can be made in regards to freedom of expression. In a sense, Arenas was Castro's Marquis de Sade. Behind bars he earns cigarettes and the like by writing letters for the illiterate inmates. Rather than a beautiful laundress like Kate Winslet smuggling out his manuscript, we have Johnny Depp as a transvestite named Bon Bon with an ingenious way to get them out. Sade is stripped and chained in Quills, reduced to writing in his own excrement, while in Before Night Falls the most unsettling, claustrophobic scene is when Arenas is crammed into a coffin like cell in which he is unable to up, a single blinding light bulb in. While Quills is more philosophical about the right to freedom of expression and is not a truly autobiographical film, Before Night Falls is very tied to its time and while not a political movie in the usual sense, the Revolution plays a major role.
A daring escape keeps Arenas in hiding and also leads to the many images of water, from the ocean to rains that Arenas looks to for freedom. One of the most magnificent scenes is when Arenas and his friends, living in an abandoned church, hatch a plot to escape by hot air balloon the morning after a final party. That scene, poignant and surreal, contrasts greatly to his actual departure of Cuba in 1980 when he is humiliated one last time before leaving.
The acting is superb. The talented Spanish actor Javier Bardem embodies the passion of a man unable to be anyone else. Dual cameos by Johnny Depp as transvestite Bon Bon and a hypocritical military lieutenant prove once again how capable he is, and Sean Penn as a Cuban farmer who gives a young Arenas a lift is a plus. Vito Maria Schnabel is also very good as a young Reinaldo. Olivier Martinez plays Lazaro Gomez Carillas, the companion who travels with Arenas to New York.
Language is integral to the film. We hear Bardem's descriptions of the initial excitement of the Revolution in un-subtitled Spanish (which is beautiful, however it may prove exasperating for those who do not speak Spanish).
Surreal sensuality and harsh reality amalgamate in Before Night Falls to create a passionate life of an artist.
Anji Milanovic
 Movie Reviews: 1998 - 2011
Movie Reviews: 2012 - present
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