Before Night Falls

Reinaldo Arenas grows up in a poor Cuban village, becomes a writer in Havana after the revolution and starts being published abroad. He is imprisoned for being homosexual and for what he writes. He goes on writing in prison. In 1980 he leaves among those departing from the port of Mariel and is alone in America too. The subject is not exile but the will to write never stopping under any condition. Unable to find paper in prison, Arenas writes between other men's letters and smuggles the pages out. The film's best passages are the ones showing that insistence on producing. The form is fragmentary and poetic. Julian Schnabel works as a painter and uses the image as texture; archive footage, mock documentary and dream sequences fold together. The narration is chronological but not explanatory. The source is Arenas's own memoir; he took his life in 1990, shortly after finishing it. Javier Bardem plays Arenas and altered his Spanish accent for the role; he won best actor at Venice for it and was nominated for an Oscar. Johnny Depp appears in two separate roles. Who it is for: viewers who like writers' biographies and formally free films. Who it is not for: anyone expecting an orderly narrative; the film jumps often and passes over some periods without explanation.