A friend and I were recently discussing how the urge to create often burns more fiercely when it has been suppressed. Such is the theme of Before Night Falls, the biography of Cuban novelist/poet Reinaldo Arenas, whose life illustrates how creativity can flourish even under oppression, and what freedom truly means.
Born in an extremely poor province in 1943, Arenas nevertheless revels in the natural beauty that surrounds him. `The splendor of my childhood was unique because of its absolute poverty and absolute freedom,' he later noted. Clearly a born poet, the boy expresses himself by carving words into the family's trees, much to his grandfather's furor.
When he's 15, Arenas' family moves to Holguin, where the romance of Castro's rebel troops and their attempts to overthrow Batista inspire him to leave home and join the insurrection. Four years later he's acclimating to big city life in Havana and enjoying a job at the prestigious National Library that Communism has awarded him. But alongside Castro's revolution, a concurrent sexual revolution is brewing, and Arenas begins to embrace his homosexuality. He plunges himself into his writing, develops a circle of poets and lovers, and at age 20, writes the first of nine novels, the only one published in his homeland.
By the late 60s, Castro's jackals begin to send artists and homosexuals to concentration camps and suppress their work. Despite the lingering threat, Arenas continues to write outspokenly, and when his second book is censored, he enrages Castro by smuggling it to France for publication.
[plot spoiler?] We watch with horror as this brutal regime harasses, imprisons, and ultimately exiles Arenas to America for having `weak, nonrevolutionary (i.e., homosexual) genes.' He has dared to express beauty, and beauty, as a mentor notes, is the enemy of any dictatorship.
But Arenas' spirit is such that even in a medieval-style prison chamber, amidst the screams and cries, he finds that he has never written so much. He composes letters for the inmates, and when they reward him with cigarettes, he uses the rolling paper to pen his third novel, Before Night Falls.
Director/painter Julian Schnabel (BASQUIAT) has given us a film of many strengths, including the juxtaposition of the fertile natural world against Arenas' suffering at the hands of sadistic oppressors. The film opens with a pan through the treetops, sensually caresses the ocean tides, and when Arenas finally makes it to New York, rewards him with a magnificent baptism of snow falling gently on his face.
It's hard to play a writer. Most of us eschew Stallone-style emoting, and much of our work plays out in our heads and on the page--not the stuff of box office. But Spanish actor Javier Bardem delivers a phenomenal performance as Arenas, infusing him with depth, will and supreme sensitivity. And if you've yearned to see Sean Penn as a Cuban peasant and Johnny Depp in drag (called `Bon-Bon,' no less), here's your golden opportunity.
My wish list for this film would include a more understandable narrator and fewer unexplained incidents. This is another biopic that requires background reading to fully understand what's going on, especially after Arenas arrives in New York. I also would have loved hearing more of Arenas' voice. In the film's most successful passages, the narradore reads from his work, lines like `My grandmother was the only woman I've ever known who could pee standing up and talk to God at the same time.'
But all told, this memorable, `triumph of the human spirit' film, pulsing with Cubanismo, is well worth witnessing.
Born in an extremely poor province in 1943, Arenas nevertheless revels in the natural beauty that surrounds him. `The splendor of my childhood was unique because of its absolute poverty and absolute freedom,' he later noted. Clearly a born poet, the boy expresses himself by carving words into the family's trees, much to his grandfather's furor.
When he's 15, Arenas' family moves to Holguin, where the romance of Castro's rebel troops and their attempts to overthrow Batista inspire him to leave home and join the insurrection. Four years later he's acclimating to big city life in Havana and enjoying a job at the prestigious National Library that Communism has awarded him. But alongside Castro's revolution, a concurrent sexual revolution is brewing, and Arenas begins to embrace his homosexuality. He plunges himself into his writing, develops a circle of poets and lovers, and at age 20, writes the first of nine novels, the only one published in his homeland.
By the late 60s, Castro's jackals begin to send artists and homosexuals to concentration camps and suppress their work. Despite the lingering threat, Arenas continues to write outspokenly, and when his second book is censored, he enrages Castro by smuggling it to France for publication.
[plot spoiler?] We watch with horror as this brutal regime harasses, imprisons, and ultimately exiles Arenas to America for having `weak, nonrevolutionary (i.e., homosexual) genes.' He has dared to express beauty, and beauty, as a mentor notes, is the enemy of any dictatorship.
But Arenas' spirit is such that even in a medieval-style prison chamber, amidst the screams and cries, he finds that he has never written so much. He composes letters for the inmates, and when they reward him with cigarettes, he uses the rolling paper to pen his third novel, Before Night Falls.
Director/painter Julian Schnabel (BASQUIAT) has given us a film of many strengths, including the juxtaposition of the fertile natural world against Arenas' suffering at the hands of sadistic oppressors. The film opens with a pan through the treetops, sensually caresses the ocean tides, and when Arenas finally makes it to New York, rewards him with a magnificent baptism of snow falling gently on his face.
It's hard to play a writer. Most of us eschew Stallone-style emoting, and much of our work plays out in our heads and on the page--not the stuff of box office. But Spanish actor Javier Bardem delivers a phenomenal performance as Arenas, infusing him with depth, will and supreme sensitivity. And if you've yearned to see Sean Penn as a Cuban peasant and Johnny Depp in drag (called `Bon-Bon,' no less), here's your golden opportunity.
My wish list for this film would include a more understandable narrator and fewer unexplained incidents. This is another biopic that requires background reading to fully understand what's going on, especially after Arenas arrives in New York. I also would have loved hearing more of Arenas' voice. In the film's most successful passages, the narradore reads from his work, lines like `My grandmother was the only woman I've ever known who could pee standing up and talk to God at the same time.'
But all told, this memorable, `triumph of the human spirit' film, pulsing with Cubanismo, is well worth witnessing.