Themes: Writer's Life, Social Injustice, Political Unrest
Main Cast: Javier Bardem, Olivier Martinez, Andrea Di Stefano, Johnny Depp, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn
Release Year: 2000
Country: US
Run Time: 125 minutes
Plot
For his sophomore feature film effort, visual artist Julian Schnabel chronicles the life of one of Cuba's most charismatic literary voices, the late Reinaldo Arenas. Working with Arenas' friends and family, Schnabel recounts the author's impoverished rural upbringing and the intense love and support he receives from his mother (played by the director's wife, Olatz Lopez Garmendia). As a young man, Arenas (Javier Bardem) is singled out by his teachers and encouraged to further his skills as a writer -- no easy task, considering the Castro regime's censorship of any work considered to be subversive or anti-authoritarian. Still, the author manages to smuggle his work out of the country through friends, who arrange for one of his novels to be published in France. Not only persecuted for his creative beliefs, the openly gay Arenas is jailed on a bogus sex charge; he escapes internment only to be captured and persecuted later for his contraband dispatches. In 1980, Arenas is finally allowed to leave Cuba for the United States, where he achieves freedom of expression but not prosperity. Schnabel's first film was another portrait of an artist, 1996's Basquiat; Bardem made his name in several of director Pedro Almodovar's Spanish-language productions. Before Night Falls premiered at the 2000 Venice Film Festival, where it received the Best Actor and Grand Special Jury prizes, and made its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Bardem would go on to receive a host of accolades, including an eventual Best Actor nomination at the 2001 Academy Awards. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Review
Julian Schnabel's feverish portrait of Revolutionary Cuba through the eyes of one of its most vocal expatriates, Before Night Falls is everything the director's first artist biopic (1996's Basquiat) wasn't. Where that film sacrificed character and nuance for elaborate shots and showy performances, Night winds its naturalistic imagery tightly to a heartfelt core: the wide-eyed, expressive lead performance of Javier Bardem as Reinaldo Arenas. Never resorting to martyred-genius posturing, Bardem gives Arenas a brash, scruffy physicality, suggesting that the writer was affected as much by the hedonism of his youth as he was by the injustices of his adult life under the Castro regime. Characters appear and disappear from the story with little warning (Schnabel's decision to cast Johnny Depp in two cameo roles proves distracting), and their motivations can be elusive at times. Instead of detracting from the experience, however, these plot hiccups reinforce the notion that Arenas' life was a collection of juxtapositions both absurd and rational, drab and passionate. When Arenas succumbs to AIDS in the flat, colorless sequence that ends the film, it's neither an indictment of American culture nor a weepy, disease-movie crescendo of emotion. Rather, viewers are left with the feeling that Schnabel has encompassed the full scope of an extraordinary existence, and done justice to a person who would've preferred not to be sentimentalized by death. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Before Night Falls is a 2000movie directed by Julian Schnabel. The screenplay is based on the autobiography of Reinaldo Arenas, which was published in English in 1993.[1] The screenplay was written by Schnabel, Cunningham O'Keefe and Lázaro Gómez Carriles.
This was the second film of director Julian Schnabel, after Basquiat (1996). Schnabel got the idea of making Before Night Falls immediately after making Basquiat , however it took four years to actually produce the film.[2] It had its world premiere at the 2000 Venice International Film Festival and its North American premiere at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival.[3]
Before Night Falls is based on the autobiography of the same name by Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas. Arenas, who was openly gay, was born in Oriente in 1943 and raised by his single mother and grandparents who soon moved the entire family to Holguín. After moving to Havana in the sixties to continue his studies, Reinaldo started exploring his sexuality and ambitions. After finishing second in a writing contest, Arenas gets offered the chance to publish his first work. Through his work and friendships with other openly gay men (such as Pepe Malas and Tomas Diego), Arenas managed to find himself.
However, the political climate in Cuba continued to become increasingly dangerous and in the early seventies Arenas is arrested for sexually assaulting minors (a claim he wasn't guilty of) and publishing abroad without official consent. In the next decade Arenas keeps going in and out of prison, attempting to leave the country several times but failing each time.
In 1980 Arenas is finally able to leave Cuba for the USA where he starts a new life with his close friend and lover Lazaro Gomez Carilles. However, after a few years, Arenas finds out he is suffering from AIDS. After spending several years in sickness he eventually dies in 1990 with help from Lazaro.
Spanish actress/singer Najwa Nimri briefly appears as the suicidal Fina Zorilla Ochoa, while Diego Luna (who was still relatively unknown at the time) has a small role as Reinaldo's childhood friend Carlos. Director Julian Schnabel's entire family is also in the film: sons Cy Schnabel and Olmo Schnabel play classmates of the young Reinaldo, son Vito Maria Schnabel plays the teenaged version of Reinaldo, daughter Lola Schnabel plays the 'girl with keys' while daughter Stella Schnabel plays Valeria. His parents Jack Schnabel and Esther G. Schnabel appear as Mr. and Mrs. Greenberg at the end of the film while wife Olatz López Garmendia plays Reinaldo's mother.
