Amazon.co.uk Review
Based 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 enamoured 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. While Schnabel suffers from a hyperactive camera, there's poetry here--visual, dramatic, and literal--and vibrant humour 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
Customer Reviews:
colorful, multi-layered and richly-textured.......2008-01-16
A beautiful film in every terms: from outstanding cinematography to dazzling ambiance, from stirring performances to gripping theme. Having the bittersweet taste of an independent film, it defies categorization, grimly realistic and highly improvisational. What I particularly found captivating is its almost-documentary nature and realness, a razor-sharp realness disguised under character persona.
The film traces the chaotic life of Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas, from his unwanted birth in absolute poverty in Oriente to his death in NYC at the age of 47. Multi-layered and absorbing, the film follows a narrative-based episodic course and never gets bogged down in long and boring psychological analyses and free from any kind of unnecessary details. What's more, mercifully no moron-oriented Hollywood sentimentality is dragged in to undermine its effectiveness.
From the very beginning, ex neo-expressionist painter Julian Schnabel, famous for huge canvasses, imbues the film with vibrant colors and stylish "strokes". Everything begins with a highly artsy-craftsy scene which heralds the coming of the striking leitmotif: a close-up of a little boy, totally naked, playing with mud in a squalid hole surrounded by an incredible beauty. He's naked because he possesses no clothes; he's playing with mud because he owns no toys. From now on, his childhood in absolute poverty, his youthful idealism to join to rebels against Batista regime, the discovery of his writing talents as well as his homosexuality, his sufferings during repression and persecution period just after Cuban Revolution, his arrest and brutal imprisonement at El Morro, his escape to the U.S. during the 1980 Mariel Boatlifts and his last crash as the life is drained out of him in NYC, all told in a sense giving the taste of beauty and aesthetics of a poetry.
My only complaint is that although the main language of the film is English, some scenes are shot in English, some Cuban-Spanish. For a film with such helluva visual and emotional moments in exotic backdrops of Cuba, the spoken English moments are pointless and undercut the film's effectiveness. It would be better if the film was served entirely in Spanish.
Extraordinary!.......2007-03-20
Julian Schnabel, a painter, has directed one of the most extraordinary films of recent times. I saw it in the theater on its initial release, and reccently watched it on DVD again, and my admiration for it has grown. The first time I saw it, it had been a few years since I had read Arenas' memoirs, on which it is based. From the hedonistic freedom that swept Cuba as Castro took charge , followed too soon after by the most horrific repression that Arenas had to suffer for being a writer and being gay, the book piled detail on detail, on such an extraordinary scale it was almost unbelievable! Magic realism couldn't hold a candle to Arenas own life! Prodigious sex and prolific writing and relentless persecution all one after another! The final irony ofcourse being that Arenas escapes Cuba,to arrive in America, and soon succumb to the ravages of AIDS.
So much of the book survives in the film, that was what struck me when I saw it. It carried the book's explicitness as much as one could, and Javier Bardem's performance is one of the greatest screen performances of recent times. Utterly daring! What better tribute to Arenas, who thanks to his remarkable book, and Schnabel's and Bardem's work here, has achieved the revenge on his tormentors, that he so wished!
rich moving film about humanity.......2005-09-24
Having just watched this for the second time in a month, after having first taped it to help with my spanish studies (and because of the added bonus of Johnny Depp being in it!), it is one of my favourite films. I hadn't heard of Reinaldo Arenas previously, but the absolutely perfect performance that Javier Bardem gives, and the beautiful directing of this film, the production, the music, the colourfulness, Johnny Depp and Sean Penn's cameos, the clips of a previously banned film as the credits roll ... all of it tells the most touching story, contrasting the abuse of human rights with a very touching humanity.
The times when the pace of the film slows I found to be most effective in making you care even more, and feel much closer to, Reinaldo, almost as if the film had gone into real time and you suddenly realised you were almost in the room with the characters, and at their most vulnerable time. The slowing of the pace happens occasionally, but most of all as Reinaldo's health is deteriorating; as with the whole of the film, this is impeccably handled. This film's had me in tears both times, near the end, and I don't easily cry at anything! Amazing movie, powerful and well worth seeing again and again. One of the most human films I can recall seeing.
Limited appeal.......2005-09-03
I only watched this because i knew Johnny Depp had a small part in it. I didn't know what it was about and only knew that Depp played a drag queen. Perhaps if i'd known more beforehand my opinion on it would be different.
The film is a biopic of a writer, set in Cuba. We see glimpses of his childhood, to his adult life where he spends a period in jail, basically for being homosexual, up until his death. I could tell you more if i even knew myself. I found it hard to follow what was going on and the dialogue can be hard to understand with thier accents. The film was also too long and dragged on at the end. I only realised the man died from AIDS from reading the other reviews on here.
I did like the soundtrack to the film and there are some beautiful sequences where there is music playing over a scene and no dialogue. The acting cannot be faulted either.
I think this film has a limited target audience. Unless you have an interest in Reinaldo Arenas or Cuban history then i'd guess that you're not going to enjoy it much.
I do have a broad taste in films and enjoy many independent and foreign films so it's not like i'm someone who just can't handle a non-mainstream film. Before Night Falls just didn't interest me, i found it slow moving and difficult to follow.
Stunning.......2005-08-26
I haven't seen this for a while but I think its quite stunning. Its poignant, moving, interesting and humourous, tragic and shocking. The latter refers simply to the fact that Reinaldo Arenas' life ended in this suicide, when the film creates (in its portrayal of 1950's Cuba) a world almost before innocence lost! Obviously that might not make sense completely - But I mean it is portrayed as a vibrant, bright, free and easy world.
This contrasts strongly with the representation of Castro-era Communism.
I think the film, like the book, is just utterly moving and quite beautifully filmed. As well, it makes some important observations about the period in history and freedom from censorship, be it the banning of free media/authorship or the censorship of unwanted deviants from society.
If you haven't seen it, do so. You'll be proud to have it and see it again.
Amazon.co.uk Review
Based 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 enamoured 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. While Schnabel suffers from a hyperactive camera, there's poetry here--visual, dramatic, and literal--and vibrant humour 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
Customer Reviews:
colorful, multi-layered and richly-textured.......2008-01-16
A beautiful film in every terms: from outstanding cinematography to dazzling ambiance, from stirring performances to gripping theme. Having the bittersweet taste of an independent film, it defies categorization, grimly realistic and highly improvisational. What I particularly found captivating is its almost-documentary nature and realness, a razor-sharp realness disguised under character persona.
The film traces the chaotic life of Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas, from his unwanted birth in absolute poverty in Oriente to his death in NYC at the age of 47. Multi-layered and absorbing, the film follows a narrative-based episodic course and never gets bogged down in long and boring psychological analyses and free from any kind of unnecessary details. What's more, mercifully no moron-oriented Hollywood sentimentality is dragged in to undermine its effectiveness.
From the very beginning, ex neo-expressionist painter Julian Schnabel, famous for huge canvasses, imbues the film with vibrant colors and stylish "strokes". Everything begins with a highly artsy-craftsy scene which heralds the coming of the striking leitmotif: a close-up of a little boy, totally naked, playing with mud in a squalid hole surrounded by an incredible beauty. He's naked because he possesses no clothes; he's playing with mud because he owns no toys. From now on, his childhood in absolute poverty, his youthful idealism to join to rebels against Batista regime, the discovery of his writing talents as well as his homosexuality, his sufferings during repression and persecution period just after Cuban Revolution, his arrest and brutal imprisonement at El Morro, his escape to the U.S. during the 1980 Mariel Boatlifts and his last crash as the life is drained out of him in NYC, all told in a sense giving the taste of beauty and aesthetics of a poetry.
My only complaint is that although the main language of the film is English, some scenes are shot in English, some Cuban-Spanish. For a film with such helluva visual and emotional moments in exotic backdrops of Cuba, the spoken English moments are pointless and undercut the film's effectiveness. It would be better if the film was served entirely in Spanish.
Extraordinary!.......2007-03-20
Julian Schnabel, a painter, has directed one of the most extraordinary films of recent times. I saw it in the theater on its initial release, and reccently watched it on DVD again, and my admiration for it has grown. The first time I saw it, it had been a few years since I had read Arenas' memoirs, on which it is based. From the hedonistic freedom that swept Cuba as Castro took charge , followed too soon after by the most horrific repression that Arenas had to suffer for being a writer and being gay, the book piled detail on detail, on such an extraordinary scale it was almost unbelievable! Magic realism couldn't hold a candle to Arenas own life! Prodigious sex and prolific writing and relentless persecution all one after another! The final irony ofcourse being that Arenas escapes Cuba,to arrive in America, and soon succumb to the ravages of AIDS.
So much of the book survives in the film, that was what struck me when I saw it. It carried the book's explicitness as much as one could, and Javier Bardem's performance is one of the greatest screen performances of recent times. Utterly daring! What better tribute to Arenas, who thanks to his remarkable book, and Schnabel's and Bardem's work here, has achieved the revenge on his tormentors, that he so wished!
rich moving film about humanity.......2005-09-24
Having just watched this for the second time in a month, after having first taped it to help with my spanish studies (and because of the added bonus of Johnny Depp being in it!), it is one of my favourite films. I hadn't heard of Reinaldo Arenas previously, but the absolutely perfect performance that Javier Bardem gives, and the beautiful directing of this film, the production, the music, the colourfulness, Johnny Depp and Sean Penn's cameos, the clips of a previously banned film as the credits roll ... all of it tells the most touching story, contrasting the abuse of human rights with a very touching humanity.
The times when the pace of the film slows I found to be most effective in making you care even more, and feel much closer to, Reinaldo, almost as if the film had gone into real time and you suddenly realised you were almost in the room with the characters, and at their most vulnerable time. The slowing of the pace happens occasionally, but most of all as Reinaldo's health is deteriorating; as with the whole of the film, this is impeccably handled. This film's had me in tears both times, near the end, and I don't easily cry at anything! Amazing movie, powerful and well worth seeing again and again. One of the most human films I can recall seeing.
Limited appeal.......2005-09-03
I only watched this because i knew Johnny Depp had a small part in it. I didn't know what it was about and only knew that Depp played a drag queen. Perhaps if i'd known more beforehand my opinion on it would be different.
The film is a biopic of a writer, set in Cuba. We see glimpses of his childhood, to his adult life where he spends a period in jail, basically for being homosexual, up until his death. I could tell you more if i even knew myself. I found it hard to follow what was going on and the dialogue can be hard to understand with thier accents. The film was also too long and dragged on at the end. I only realised the man died from AIDS from reading the other reviews on here.
I did like the soundtrack to the film and there are some beautiful sequences where there is music playing over a scene and no dialogue. The acting cannot be faulted either.
I think this film has a limited target audience. Unless you have an interest in Reinaldo Arenas or Cuban history then i'd guess that you're not going to enjoy it much.
I do have a broad taste in films and enjoy many independent and foreign films so it's not like i'm someone who just can't handle a non-mainstream film. Before Night Falls just didn't interest me, i found it slow moving and difficult to follow.
Stunning.......2005-08-26
I haven't seen this for a while but I think its quite stunning. Its poignant, moving, interesting and humourous, tragic and shocking. The latter refers simply to the fact that Reinaldo Arenas' life ended in this suicide, when the film creates (in its portrayal of 1950's Cuba) a world almost before innocence lost! Obviously that might not make sense completely - But I mean it is portrayed as a vibrant, bright, free and easy world.
This contrasts strongly with the representation of Castro-era Communism.
I think the film, like the book, is just utterly moving and quite beautifully filmed. As well, it makes some important observations about the period in history and freedom from censorship, be it the banning of free media/authorship or the censorship of unwanted deviants from society.
If you haven't seen it, do so. You'll be proud to have it and see it again.
Amazon.co.uk Review
Based 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 enamoured 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. While Schnabel suffers from a hyperactive camera, there's poetry here--visual, dramatic, and literal--and vibrant humour 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
Customer Reviews:
colorful, multi-layered and richly-textured.......2008-01-16
A beautiful film in every terms: from outstanding cinematography to dazzling ambiance, from stirring performances to gripping theme. Having the bittersweet taste of an independent film, it defies categorization, grimly realistic and highly improvisational. What I particularly found captivating is its almost-documentary nature and realness, a razor-sharp realness disguised under character persona.
The film traces the chaotic life of Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas, from his unwanted birth in absolute poverty in Oriente to his death in NYC at the age of 47. Multi-layered and absorbing, the film follows a narrative-based episodic course and never gets bogged down in long and boring psychological analyses and free from any kind of unnecessary details. What's more, mercifully no moron-oriented Hollywood sentimentality is dragged in to undermine its effectiveness.
From the very beginning, ex neo-expressionist painter Julian Schnabel, famous for huge canvasses, imbues the film with vibrant colors and stylish "strokes". Everything begins with a highly artsy-craftsy scene which heralds the coming of the striking leitmotif: a close-up of a little boy, totally naked, playing with mud in a squalid hole surrounded by an incredible beauty. He's naked because he possesses no clothes; he's playing with mud because he owns no toys. From now on, his childhood in absolute poverty, his youthful idealism to join to rebels against Batista regime, the discovery of his writing talents as well as his homosexuality, his sufferings during repression and persecution period just after Cuban Revolution, his arrest and brutal imprisonement at El Morro, his escape to the U.S. during the 1980 Mariel Boatlifts and his last crash as the life is drained out of him in NYC, all told in a sense giving the taste of beauty and aesthetics of a poetry.
My only complaint is that although the main language of the film is English, some scenes are shot in English, some Cuban-Spanish. For a film with such helluva visual and emotional moments in exotic backdrops of Cuba, the spoken English moments are pointless and undercut the film's effectiveness. It would be better if the film was served entirely in Spanish.
Extraordinary!.......2007-03-20
Julian Schnabel, a painter, has directed one of the most extraordinary films of recent times. I saw it in the theater on its initial release, and reccently watched it on DVD again, and my admiration for it has grown. The first time I saw it, it had been a few years since I had read Arenas' memoirs, on which it is based. From the hedonistic freedom that swept Cuba as Castro took charge , followed too soon after by the most horrific repression that Arenas had to suffer for being a writer and being gay, the book piled detail on detail, on such an extraordinary scale it was almost unbelievable! Magic realism couldn't hold a candle to Arenas own life! Prodigious sex and prolific writing and relentless persecution all one after another! The final irony ofcourse being that Arenas escapes Cuba,to arrive in America, and soon succumb to the ravages of AIDS.
So much of the book survives in the film, that was what struck me when I saw it. It carried the book's explicitness as much as one could, and Javier Bardem's performance is one of the greatest screen performances of recent times. Utterly daring! What better tribute to Arenas, who thanks to his remarkable book, and Schnabel's and Bardem's work here, has achieved the revenge on his tormentors, that he so wished!
rich moving film about humanity.......2005-09-24
Having just watched this for the second time in a month, after having first taped it to help with my spanish studies (and because of the added bonus of Johnny Depp being in it!), it is one of my favourite films. I hadn't heard of Reinaldo Arenas previously, but the absolutely perfect performance that Javier Bardem gives, and the beautiful directing of this film, the production, the music, the colourfulness, Johnny Depp and Sean Penn's cameos, the clips of a previously banned film as the credits roll ... all of it tells the most touching story, contrasting the abuse of human rights with a very touching humanity.
The times when the pace of the film slows I found to be most effective in making you care even more, and feel much closer to, Reinaldo, almost as if the film had gone into real time and you suddenly realised you were almost in the room with the characters, and at their most vulnerable time. The slowing of the pace happens occasionally, but most of all as Reinaldo's health is deteriorating; as with the whole of the film, this is impeccably handled. This film's had me in tears both times, near the end, and I don't easily cry at anything! Amazing movie, powerful and well worth seeing again and again. One of the most human films I can recall seeing.
Limited appeal.......2005-09-03
I only watched this because i knew Johnny Depp had a small part in it. I didn't know what it was about and only knew that Depp played a drag queen. Perhaps if i'd known more beforehand my opinion on it would be different.
The film is a biopic of a writer, set in Cuba. We see glimpses of his childhood, to his adult life where he spends a period in jail, basically for being homosexual, up until his death. I could tell you more if i even knew myself. I found it hard to follow what was going on and the dialogue can be hard to understand with thier accents. The film was also too long and dragged on at the end. I only realised the man died from AIDS from reading the other reviews on here.
I did like the soundtrack to the film and there are some beautiful sequences where there is music playing over a scene and no dialogue. The acting cannot be faulted either.
I think this film has a limited target audience. Unless you have an interest in Reinaldo Arenas or Cuban history then i'd guess that you're not going to enjoy it much.
I do have a broad taste in films and enjoy many independent and foreign films so it's not like i'm someone who just can't handle a non-mainstream film. Before Night Falls just didn't interest me, i found it slow moving and difficult to follow.
Stunning.......2005-08-26
I haven't seen this for a while but I think its quite stunning. Its poignant, moving, interesting and humourous, tragic and shocking. The latter refers simply to the fact that Reinaldo Arenas' life ended in this suicide, when the film creates (in its portrayal of 1950's Cuba) a world almost before innocence lost! Obviously that might not make sense completely - But I mean it is portrayed as a vibrant, bright, free and easy world.
This contrasts strongly with the representation of Castro-era Communism.
I think the film, like the book, is just utterly moving and quite beautifully filmed. As well, it makes some important observations about the period in history and freedom from censorship, be it the banning of free media/authorship or the censorship of unwanted deviants from society.
If you haven't seen it, do so. You'll be proud to have it and see it again.
UK DVD:
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UK DVD List
UK DVD
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