When going to the cinema, you tend to decide your feelings about the film within the first couple of minutes. It is a sensory thing. We are either attracted in some way to the sounds and images immediately or we simply aren’t. With Before Night Falls I found myself in love. The language, the sounds, the images. The unrequited love began.
Before Night Falls covers several decades in the life of famed Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas. Mr. Arenas suffered intense persecution in Cuba for his homosexuality, and was eventually able to flee to america.
I have always enjoyed the work of Javier Bardem. Now I find myself loving him. His performance was phenomenal, so incredibly human. You can not help but love some of the little quirks he has thrown in. In the end, it is his frailty that brings us to tears. He really is able to play the depression caused by his AIDS well. Honestly, while he is content with dying, we are not.
But he is not the only piece to this puzzle, Diego Luna, Sean Penn, Michael Wincott, and Johnny Depp add some wonderful character to the film.
The direction is what takes the cake. Julian Schnabel is brilliant, as he always comes up with new ways for us to view things. Water, the sky, even New York. All of the poetry sequences are inserted perfectly into the film. We are always in the story, and never seem to lose interest.
This is a great film, it may not be one of my favorite films of all time, but it is easily in my top 100 films of the 2000′s.
Tags: Arenas, Before Night Falls, Cuba, Film, Javier Bardem, Johnny Depp, Poetry, Sean Penn
Good review. Meantime, I agree with Mae West:
“Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.”