"Before Night Falls"
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2000 Venice Film Festival, "Before Night Falls" tells of the life and the writings of Cuban exile Reinaldo Arenas. The gay author spent years in and out of Cuba's jails for his inflammatory prose and poetry before escaping to the United States in 1980. Javier Bardem plays the persecuted writer and co-stars with the likes of Johnny Depp, Sean Penn and Michael Wincott in a film by Julian Schnabel.
Javier Bardem does a fine job of portraying the intelligent, talented Arenas as we follow him, first, as a young man showing an interest in the written word (and men bathing), and, later, as he garners critical attention for his first novel. He develops such a following and notoriety that he comes under the scrutiny of Castro's police and their Russian masters because of his deviant "capitalist" lifestyle. This begins a tale of persecution and a personal fight for creative freedom that last up until Arenas leaves his homeland in the Mariel Harbor exodus of 1980, when Castro evicted all of Cuba's "deviants, homosexuals and mentally ill" to the shores of the US.
The tone of the story of "Before Night Falls" is more political and social in nature, showing Arenas' persecution for his homosexuality and his politically motivated work. The machismo of Cuba is threatened by the sexual revolution getting under way in the 50's and 60's around the world. The oppressive totalitarian government actively tries to subdue this other revolution with arrests of gays, sending them to cut sugarcane as rehabilitation. Arenas never gave up, getting his written word out of the country for publication by any means. At one point he even uses a transvestite inmate's behind to smuggle out the pages of his latest tome. (Check out who plays the transvestite.)
The depiction of Cuba, by Schnabel and production designer Salvador Parra, over the years the story unfolds, is generic and doesn't give the feel that "you are there." The main means used to show the Cuban location is by having everyone walking around smoking cigars, even some of the women. The scenes on the streets of Havana have an obvious movie set feel, pulling attention away from the action
The screenplay, by Schnabel, Lazaro Gomez Carriles and Cunningham O'Keefe, brings us, point by point, along the way as we follow Arenas through his life, his incarcerations and escapes. Once he finally is freed, Arena spends his last days with a disease we can only guess is AIDS - filmmaker Julian Schnabel fails to tell us about it, so I can only guess. This kind of omission detracts from the story, as it requires the viewer to unnecessarily guess what's going on.
"Before Night Falls" is hopeful tragedy that shows the strength of the human spirit under adversity. The tragedy is that not everyone is as courageous and talented as Reinaldo Arenas, who, when he finally escapes the oppression of Castro, realizes that he has lost his Cuba. Javier Bardem is solid in his portrayal of Arenas, even if the script is weak. I give it a C+.
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