Barnes & Noble

Overripe and intensely lyrical, Julian Schnabel's second film is a fever dream of a biopic. Based on the memoir of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, Before Night Falls chronicles the author's poverty-stricken childhood in rural Cuba, his artistic and sexual awakening in a Havana during the early, heady days of Castro's revolution, and his eventual persecution by the Communist government, both for his writing and his homosexuality. The story, as rendered by Schnabel, is a gorgeous, pulsating swirl of images -- as dense and visceral as the director's infamous Neo-Expressionist paintings, Before Nightfall soars where the director's first feature, Basquiat, fell flat. Holding it all together is the wonderful Spanish actor Javier Bardem (High Heels), whose affecting, Oscar-nominated performance as Arenas supplies the film with an unshakable center of emotional gravity. Schnabel -- whose film is a vast improvement on his previous portrait of an artist, Basquiat -- takes liberties with his source material; in particular, he downplays the obsessive promiscuity that Arenas describes in his autobiography. This decision, along with some lapses in narrative clarity, makes the film less coherent than it might have been. Yet, it doesn't really matter. Before Night Falls is so visually seductive that it does justice to its subject in a way that few artist biopics do. The DVD edition includes an interview with the real Reinaldo Arenas. Kryssa Schemmerling

All Movie Guide

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

Product Details

• UPC: 794043525124
• Source: NEW LINE HOME VIDEO
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Theatre Wide-Screen (1.85.1)
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby Digital, stereo
• Language: English, Español
• Subtitles: English, Français, Español
• Time: 2:13:00
• Sales Rank: 9,369

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