An incredible journey through the life and work of the late cuban poet reinaldo arenas whose courageous fight for personal expression defied censorship and persecution. Special features: subtitles in english spanish and french theatrical trailer cast and crew filmographies and much more. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 08/29/2006 Starring: Javier Bardem Sean Penn Run time: 125 minutes Rating: RBased on the posthumously published memoir by Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas, Before Night Falls is artist-director Julian Schnabel’s second exercise in artist biography, but where Schnabel’s earlier film Basquiat was relatively conventional, this film is bolder in both style and execution. Schnabel is perhaps too enamored of his subject as a noble martyr, lending the film a somewhat inflated sense of importance. Still, it’s rare to see an artist’s life and work so elegantly interwoven, and Before Night Falls uses all of Arenas’s life as its canvas, from impoverished youth to lively gay freedom in mid-1950′s Cuba; imprisonment during Castro’s antigay regime; and to New York City in 1980, followed by Arenas’s battle with AIDS and subsequent suicide (depicted here as assisted) in 1990.
Through these extreme rises and falls, Arenas is always writing, his typewriter his most faithful lover and weapon (by way of smuggled manuscripts) against the dark forces that surround him. As Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, Arenas is “a serious actor’s dream role: to be a gay Jesus in a modern Passion Play,” and Javier Bardem–the first Spanish actor to receive an Oscar nomination–inhabits the role with subtle ferocity, charting this emotional odyssey with outer reserve but blazing infernos of internal passion. And while Schnabel suffers from a hyperactive camera, there’s poetry here–visual, dramatic, and literal–and vibrant humor to temper the deep tragedy of Arenas’s life. Schnabel also uses his actor friends to good advantage: a nearly unrecognizable Sean Penn adds an ironic touch to his brief appearance as a peasant, and Johnny Depp is both funny and fearsome in dual roles as a drag queen and vicious army interrogator. –Jeff Shannon
Buy “Before Night Falls” For Only $4.82
February 3, 2006
#1
This movie was terrible in that it had explicit male to male sex scenes that I didn’t need to see with my friends and nude male bodies and no sub titles and spanish? only for about half of the movie. Not entertaining at all.
February 3, 2006
#2
The story line is good, but im not going to bore you with what its about as all the reviews seem to tell you. If you want to know what its like then read this review!
First let me start by saying if your a Johnny Depp fan and thats the only reason you want to watch this, dont bother, he only gets like 10 minutes of screen time somewhere near the end.
I liked the idea of this film but there were just too many problems with it that made it very hard to like.
Firstly the narrator has such a strong accent and doesnt open his mouth at all when he speaks that its almost impossible to hear or interpret what is being said. I, like many other people I know who have seen this film, was forced to watch it with subtitles. Dont get me wrong im not “dissing” subtitles, but i just didnt excpect it and its so fustrating.I dont mean to complain and be negative, because I like to try and be optimistic about films, but this is clearly a big problem.
Secondly there are so many pointless scenes which just have no relation to the story and after a while it just gets really boring and confusing.
Also some scenes are quite disturbing so not for the faint hearted!
February 3, 2006
#3
Slow and not very well made. Nothing special or original. Very annoying story telling style. Little to no substance mainly location and sets. Big dissapointment.
February 3, 2006
#4
This movie was very disappointing to me. I read all the reviews but I must have missed somthing. Long, drawn out and never an up beat moment. Sean Penn appears for 3 minutes.
February 3, 2006
#5
The actual books by Reinaldo Arenas are probably really good. That’s the main feeling I got watching this yawn fest. There are just enough hints of passion in the screenplay to suggest really good books hiding behind this version of video cliff notes. And since they are compressing 5 books into one 2 hour movie, it’s pretty good bet that you are going to get more out of the interesting characters that show up for five minutes on the screen never to be seen again (even if some of the actors come back)
Story: Reinaldo Arenas (or whatever his fictional alter ego is called) grows up in Cuba, celebrates the Revolution, has lots of sex. When Castro starts cracking down on dissidents including homosexuals, he spends a lot of time in jail – writing. A lot of his money is made writing for other prisoners. He tries to escape several times but his friends are idiots (including the one guy that dumped him and whom he never should have trusted in the first place) and he keeps getting caught. Eventually he leaves Cuba in one of those “take them if you want them” moves by Castro. Five minutes later he’s dying of AIDS. Ten minutes later he’s dead (and one gets the feeling that those ten minutes are an entire last book). The end.
What works in this movie is Javier Bardem’s acting (although the rest of the cast is great too). What doesn’t work is Bardem’s crotch in the camera every other scene. We got it. He’s gay. He loves sex. But every other scene? Maybe if I was gay I’d be more into that, but I doubt it — it’s just too crass.
What also doesn’t work is the fact that all five books have to be compressed into this thing. I spent the entire movie promising to buy the books as soon as I had money (sadly 2001 came and that was it for my checkbook) but not enjoying the movie itself.
So it’s not a bad movie. Not a great movie either. It would have been better if the director had only decided to adapt parts of it instead of the whole thing (like The Mambo Kings where the movie is only half the book) but it’s not the greatest movie ever either.