BEFORE NIGHT FALLS
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Fine Line Features Director: Julian Schnabel Writer: Reinaldo Arenas (book), Cunningham O'Keefe, Lazaro Gomez Carriles, Julian Schnabel Cast: Javier Bardem, Olivier Martinez, Andrea Di Stefano, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, Michael Wincott, Olatz Lopez Garmendia
"Before Night Falls" is about the plight of one Cuban national whose childhood dream was to join Castro's rebels against the U.S.-supported Batista regime but then soured on the revolutionary government for good reason. While the film does not specifically point out the basis of novelist Reinaldo Arenas' (Javier Bardem) enthusiasm for fighting the established government while a child, his ardor was not totally misguided. For example, a case can be made even today for the improvements that the Communist government on that Spanish-speaking island made: 1) the poor, who were (and still are) a majority of the population, were brought up from third-grade educations to universal literacy; 2) health care, nonexistent for the masses before 1959, is now free and accessible; 3) the poverty of Cuba is shared by most of the other Caribbean islands, none of which has a Communist government; 4) the wide gulf between the wealth of the powerful and the poverty of the masses has been eliminated; 5) Cuba's poverty is largely the result of an ongoing, unjustified U.S. trade embargo and the drying up of subsidies from the Russians.
That said, we must realize that not only has Fidel Castro installed himself as the chief executive for life (now 41 years and counting), but had ordered a major campaign of repression against political dissidents and homosexuals-- sending them into what amounts to concentration camps and putting those who were most odious to the established order in "boxes," similar to what American POWs experienced in the cages of Vietnam. It was this experience in a "box" and, generally, in prison and via a program of harassments, that turned Reinaldo away from any support of the revolutionary regime, which even today sports an image of Che Guevara as its national hero.
Directed by Julian Schnable--who is Jewish, lives in Spain and New York, and did not grow up with an overly enormous interest in Cuba--"Before Night Falls" does quite a job of bringing to life a poet and novelist who at one point renounced his teachings (like Galileo) rather than continue to suffer persecution in his jail but who ultimately sent a message to the world by leaving the island in 1980 when Castro allowed homosexuals, criminals, and other so-called vermin to get out. You may leave the theater with the impression that quite a few documentaries would profit from deleting the talking heads in favor of an authentic dramatization such as Schnable's with stylized photography.
Schnabel takes us to Reinaldo's childhood, which was an idyllic one, one which demonstrates the young man's absolute joy in freedom. We see the author, whose mother had been deserted by her husband and moved with Reinaldo to a small Cuban town, realizing his homosexual bent with a passion. (He claimed to have had 5,000 sexual experiences by the age of 25.) Narrated throughout by Javier Bardem-- whose performance won him the National Board or Review's designation as Best Actor for his role--"Before Night Falls" shows the vise tightening on the man when, for no particular reason, the Castro government repudiated the sexual revolution which was part and parcel of the greater struggle and did an about face, cracking down on homosexuals by treating them in the same way it treated common criminals. During his worst year, Reinaldo was thrown in jail with scores of rapists and murderers until he agrees to disavow his own writings--which in one comic situation were smuggled out of the jail into France where his memoirs won first prize for the category.
Photographed by Xavier Perez Grobet and Guillermo Rosas with a variety of lenses to evoke a jungle-like area representing the author's childhood and frequent images of water (presumably epitomizing both freedom and security), the movie can't help forcing the audience to think about what freedom really means. I couldn't avoid wondering whether Castro could have set an example for the world by allowing Cubans to live in the style they wished provided that they did not hurt others while making sure that the strong-arms used their powers legitimately for defense and the maintenance of an orderly, democratic government.
"Before Night Falls" is nothing if not a visual movie, as though a painter like Jackson Pollock had spread a canvas on the floor and splashed on lines and spots to stand in for its various episodes. Whether you agree with the National Board of Review that Javier Bardem deserved their pick as the actor of the year (I'm voting so far for Ed Harris in "Pollock"), you'd have difficulty denying that the gifted performer IS Reinaldo Arenas, who swings from a joyful childhood with a beautiful mother to a sexually fulfilling psot- adolescence, only to be brought down again and again by the irrationalities of a puritanical system.
Not Rated. Running time: 133 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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