Cast: Javier Bardem, Olivier Martinez, Andrea Di Stefano, Sean Penn, Johnny Depp, Michael Wincott
Director: Julian Schnabel
Producer: Jon Kilik
Screenplay: Cunningham O'Keefe, Lazaro Gomez Carriles, Julian Schnabel
Cinematography: Xavier Perez Gropbet, Guillermo Rosas
Music: Carter Burwell
U.S. Distributor: Fine Line Features
It should come as no surprise that, for his second outing behind the camera, Julian Schnabel has once again turned his attention towards an artist (Schnabel's debut was 1996's Basquiat). For the director, who is world-renowned for his painting, the appeal of men like Basquiat and Reinaldo Arenas (the central character of Before Night Falls) is not difficult to understand. The outstanding question is not whether Schnabel is fascinated by his subjects, but whether he can make them as compelling on film to an audience as they are in real life to him. The answer, as least in the case of Before Night Falls, is a qualified "yes" - Schnabel tells a compelling story and his style is polished and confident. Yet, as with Basquiat, he keeps viewers at arm's length. We are observers, not participants, in Arenas's life, and that distance mutes the film's potential effectiveness.
The somewhat disjointed narrative, which is pieced together a little like one of the director's paintings, manages to cover episodes throughout Arenas' life, although they are often disconnected. While Schnabel clarifies the time periods by employing captions, some of the fast-forwards are jarring. The first incident we see is Arenas' birth in 1943 rural Cuba. Following glimpses of his poverty-stricken childhood, the scene switches to Holguin in 1958, a place that Arenas describes (in a voiceover) as "a town of 200,000 people and one garbage truck." It is in 1958 that Arenas becomes a revolutionary; by 1964, his status as a homosexual, an intellectual, and a writer has made him anathema to Castro's regime. For the next 15 years, he shuttles back and forth between jail and freedom, finally going into exile in New York City in 1981. Ten years later, at the age of 47, Arenas dies of AIDS.
In many ways, it's hard to fault Schnabel's storytelling choices. Since it's impossible to represent a man's complete life in 133 minutes, the filmmaker is content to hit as many highlights as he can. Although the result may leave us wondering a little about what happened during the interim between some scenes, Before Night Falls successfully paints a picture depicting the influences behind Arenas' writing: his difficult childhood, his conflicted feelings for his mother, coming to terms with his sexuality, the revolution in Cuba, and the pain of being an outcast in his own country. Arenas' writing is poignant, lucid, and intelligent - three characteristics that can easily be ascribed to the man who penned it.
As one might expect from a painter, Before Night Falls has a distinctive visual style. Schnabel uses images as effectively as words to advance the story. Most are simple - such as an early scene of a rainstorm that turns into a raging torrent of water, a later shot of countless prison inmates dangling bars of soap outside of their jail cells, or flashes of snow falling in New York City - but there is a beauty in this starkness. Nevertheless, because Arenas, as a writer, dealt in words, it is impossible to tell his story without embracing this component. Thus, there is a rather verbose voiceover that incorporates entire passages from Arenas' memoirs. The beauty of the language is such, however, that it rarely, if ever, feels cumbersome or unnecessary - a quality that defines the mundane voiceover in the average mainstream feature.
At the center of Before Night Falls is actor Javier Bardem. With the film moving rapidly through the years and from location to location, Arenas becomes the only constant character, so it is up to Bardem to hold the film together. He gets some help from an effective supporting cast, including the likes of Sean Penn (whose presence in a cameo is jarring) and Johnny Depp (who has two small parts, as a transvestite and an authoritarian guard), but this is Bardem's show, and Schnabel's ability to recreate Arenas' life rests squarely on his shoulders. Fortunately, the Spanish-born actor, who has previously appeared in the films of Bigas Luna and Pedro Almodovar (he played one of the leads in Live Flesh), is up to the challenge. This is a startlingly real and believable performance, with Bardem being credible as Arenas from his early twenties through his late forties.
Before Night Falls received its world premiere at the 2000 Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival. It was lauded with critical praise at both venues (in large part, I think, because critics enjoy movies about artists, especially writers), taking a number of top prizes in Venice. Unlike Ed Harris' Pollock, another film about a marquee 20th century art figure, Before Night Falls gives us some insight into the lead character's mindset, rather than simply regurgitating the facts of his biography. It is an intriguing and sporadically powerful motion picture with a stellar central performance.
© 2000 James Berardinelli