Before Night Falls

Director: Julian Schnabel
Year Released: 2000
Rating: 2.0

Love the visual aspects of the film - Schnabel is, after all, a great painter (parts of trees or wood tend to surface in a lot of his work) - but the story really goes nowhere. Reinaldo Arenas may have been a budding revolutionary with his radical writing (heard mostly in voiceover), but Schnabel and his screenwriters seem more interested in the shock value of homosexuality than the writing's impact on anyone. Sean Penn and Johnny Depp have small roles (Depp plays two parts, not exactly far removed), though they aren't necessary in the least - the inclusion of them is more a distraction than anything, akin to the celebrity pop-ups in Malick's The Thin Red Line. The last hour is particularly drama-less (the whole film is mostly flat emotionally - the brief prison sequence never feels particularly "dangerous") and there aren't any real highs or lows - if the bell curve is supposed to represent the traditional story arc, Before Night Falls is flat lining. And it's a shame too, since Bardem really embodies his character, and was probably robbed by Crowe for the Oscar. The DVD, which I saw, contains some great additions that are perhaps better than the film - one is a brief interview with the real Arenas, co-directed by Nestor Almendros, another has Schnabel's daughter shooting outtakes (Bardem and crew clearly enjoy their job), and the last is an interview with Schnabel inside his studio, where you can get to see some of his humongous paintings, and hear some of his slightly vague explanations as to what they mean.