Before Night Falls.Before Night Falls Before Night Falls (ISBN 1-852-42808-2) is the 1992 autobiography of gay Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, describing his life in Cuba, his time in prison, and his ultimate escape to the United States. * Written by Julian Schnabel. Lazaro Gomez Carriles, and Cunningham O'Keefe * Directed by Schnabel * Starring Javier Bardem, Johnny Depp, and Olivier Martinez * Fine Line Features Filmed literary biographies tend to be Windy, name-dropping affairs that presume writers pull their most famous prose out of breakfast chat and spend angst-ridden nights staring at blank paper in a writer. Unless the director is artist Julian Schnabel (Basquiat), who has made something gloriously visual and grippingly cinematic from the life of the late Cuban poet Reinaido Arenas. Anyone inclined to romanticize ro·man·ti·cize v. ro·man·ti·cized, ro·man·ti·ciz·ing, ro·man·ti·ciz·es v.tr. To view or interpret romantically; make romantic. v.intr. To think in a romantic way. Cuba in these winter years of Fidel Castro's regime needs to take a good look at Schnabel's Before Night Falls, which presents a harrowing portrait of what it meant for a writer to be gay and out in the heyday of the revolution. In a magnificently rangy rangy a term describing conformation; generally a light frame with long body and legs. performance by Javier Bardem (the sensual disabled cop in Almodovar's Live Fresh), Arenas grows in gravity and stature from his vivacious student days to his AIDS-ravaged finale in New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. . Emerging from poverty with the help of writing scholarships, the poet flourishes in the relatively open '60s, when Arenas participates in gay-friendly literary salons as well as sexual romps with men in uniform. As Castro's repressive hold tightens, Arenas must run a veritable Midnight Express obstacle course of imprisonment Imprisonment See also Isolation. Alcatraz Island former federal maximum security penitentiary, near San Francisco; “escapeproof.” [Am. Hist.: Flexner, 218] Altmark, the German prison ship in World War II. [Br. Hist. and psychological torture before landing on unsteady feet in America. Director Schnabel makes all the right moves, not the least of which is the witty double-casting of Johnny Depp as a drag queen who smuggles messages in her fanny and as a sadistic sa·dism n. 1. The deriving of sexual gratification or the tendency to derive sexual gratification from inflicting pain or emotional abuse on others. 2. The deriving of pleasure, or the tendency to derive pleasure, from cruelty. prison guard with a macho stick up his butt. If Castro is watching, one wonders if little Elian Gonzalez will ever see Edward Scissorhands on a Havana TV station. Find more on Javier Bardem and Before Night Falls at www.advocate.com Stuart is film critic and senior film writer at Newsday. |
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