BEFORE NIGHT FALLS- A Film Published in ARTFOCUS/71, Summer 2001,© ARTFOCUS MAGAZINE Reviewed by Fred Herscovitch

What happens when an artist makes a film about a writer? Noted New York artist Julian Schnabel gives us a brilliant interpretation of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas's final memoir, Before Night Falls, posthumously published in l993, three years after the writer's death. Schnabel (who also directed Basquiat in l996) succeeds in giving us an eloquent and sympathetic portrait of Arenasís life. The poet Arenas is portrayed by Spain's Javier Bardem who takes command of the film from the first moment he appears on screen. This is all the more amazing because it is Bardem's first English-speaking role! You would never guess it, for he gives an impeccable performance, moving from strength to strength as he dramatizes the full range of emotions from anguish to exultation in an Oscar-nominated performance. Javier Bardem (left) with Johnny Depp in drag role. The film unrolls in Cuba with Arenas as a child playing happily on a muddy field in the province of Oriente. Born into a poor family in 1943, we follow Arenas through childhood. One incident foreshadows the years to come. The schoolteacher comes to his house where the whole family is dining. She has come to tell them that the boy has a special talent: he writes poetry. Upon hearing the news the grandfather smashes his fist on the table, grunts, and rises ominously. Cold fury written all over his face, he grabs an axe and motions for the boy to follow him outside. The whole movie theatre audience tenses, expecting some act of unspeakable horror to follow. Everyone leaves the house and follows the grandfather to an orchard where he expends his rage in chopping down a big tree. He drops the axe and stalks off while the voice-over informs us that he will never speak to the family again. This controlled rage, handled in such an unexpected way, reveals Schnabelís talent as a film maker, and throughout the movie he avoids the obvious and the clichéd. Swept by idealism, Arenas joins Castroís revolutionary army, even though he is a mere boy. By now we are made aware that he is gay, and during the euphoria immediately following the revolution (and all revolutions, for that matter) homosexuality was publicly tolerated. There are beautifully photographed sequences in which Arenas and his lovers frolic in joyous abandon. During a wonderful Havana nightclub scene, Arenas and his lover Pepe (played by Andrea Di Stefano) are highlighted by the camera while a Cuban band is playing on stage. Schnabel has ingeniously muted the sound track and substituted another song in its place-the dreamy Rouge played on a bowed string bass, or perhaps the lower register of a cello. This creates a strange, unreal presence, and, in fact, the whole film drifts between a documentary format and surrealism, somewhat like the magic realism which is quite characteristic of South American literature. The liberal atmosphere which immediately followed Castro's seizing of power was short-lived; it was quickly replaced with brutal repression. Homosexuals were actively sought out by the police and persecuted. In Arenasís case it was even worse- he was doubly damned. As a poet and novelist he was labeled subversive and his books were banned. In one scene a close-in shot of a roadside billboard sets the whole tone of the regime: If you are not with the revolution you are against the revolution. Such billboards are still seen in Cuba today. It was inevitable that Arenas would eventually be arrested. He was thrown into the notorious El Morro prison where he spent two dreadful years, some of it in solitary confinement. Arenas survives the ordeal by writing poetry on scraps of cigarette paper which he manages to smuggle out of prison, and these episodes become the subject of several marvelously bizarre scenes. During one memorable sequence, Arenas and some others are hiding out in an old abandoned church. They are planning their escape to the United States via a hot air balloon rigged to ascend through the roof of the church. After a drunken bacchanal everyone falls asleep except one traitor who gets into the balloon, intent upon escaping alone. Flames are shooting up from the basket under the balloon which only serves to fuel his euphoria as he floats up to the hole in the roof. Then the camera position changes. We are in the balloon, rising gently toward the sky while trees float past us on all sides. This is a stunning piece of cinematography. Eventually Arenas leaves Cuba, in 1980 during the infamous Mariel boat lift, taking up residence in New York. Manhattan is characterized as grey and bleak in sharp contrast to the poetís vibrant and colourful homeland. The one exception is an unforgettable scene in which the camera is pointed skyward. Huge snowflakes are drifting down at us, made incandescent by the street lights above. Arenas goes on to publish 10 novels and 10 other works ìbefore night falls,î a symbolic allusion to his awful death in 1990: decrepit and poverty-stricken from the ravages of AIDS, the writer commits suicide in New York at age 47. # # # #

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